No offense, I don’t think they hire Canadian kids/schools for their Canadian operations because of the quality more than there is already more than enough supply. IMO there are far more qualified students than there are jobs for them since Canada isn’t a huge place for them to hire vs. the US, and if the supply is good enough, why bother bringing up people from the US?
My old Big 4 firm, from what I knew, starting salaries in Canada were lower than in the US despite higher COL because they needed fewer staff relative to the demand to work there. It wasn’t just a Canada thing. I made a decent amount more for the same position vs. my friends I met working in upstate NY just because the supply/demand imbalance for labor worked in my favor.
It’s funny you say that about learning to think and reason, because in my experience, that is more suited for older children. It’s like trying to decide what color to paint your house without a foundation. The borderline absusive disciplinarian school system in Japan, while it has many flaws (like abuse), I think serves a good purpose in drilling the basics into students. I suffered during PE because I have zero athletic ability and teachers are truly borderline abusive, but hey you grow up. I attended (but didn’t graduate from) a liberal arts college, and that’s what really helped me learn to think and reason. I don’t think I could have done that at ages 6-15.
I mean, I never want to repeat the experience of schooling but if I had children, and my partner is Japanese, I’d move back to Japan in a heart beat. If the partner is white though I wouldn’t, I’m mixed too and I don’t want my children to experience that. But don’t send your children to universities in japan, they’re rubbish.
Also agree with points about private school snobbery. While my experience was only in public in US, we lived in a very affluent neighborhood (my family was not affluent, just mooched off the good school district), so I saw a lot of entitlement. I mean talk about a culture shock lol. Even if you teach your children about compassion, etc. I would worry that you’d always be looking down, instead of truly empathizing.
I was actually pointing to US/International companies hiring for US operations. I know people who got hired for Facebook, Microsoft, Goldman, Credit Suisse, BCG, Bain, McKinsey ALL for US operations directly from Canadian undergrad programs. And that’s just in the circle of people that I know. Yes all those kids were talented outliers in there own way, but I’m surprised the companies would still bother coming here to have campus events etc.
I don’t know that I have a chip on my shoulder. I’m just trying to bring to light the fact that it’s not really about where you are now, it’s about how much you accomplish with how much you’re given. Point is, there’s a lot of snobbery on AF, especially when it comes to education. And nowhere is that more evident than in a thread where multiple people say “the only good thing about an NYU diploma is that you can wipe your ass with it”. NYU is one of the best schools in the nation in any discipline, and it’s in maybe the best location (geopgraphically) in the US for recruiting, quality of life, and overall outside-the-classroom education.
Then again, I really shouldn’t be surprised when these are the same people that talk about your “run-of-the-mill $100 million dollar clients”, or “I guess there are clients with less than $10m in investable assets, but I wouldn’t waste my time on them.” Simply put, this is either WSO-type snobbery, or these people are really that out of touch with reality.
I grew up in a trailer on a farm in rural Texas. I don’t think I ever stepped foot higher than the 2nd story of a building until I was out of high school, and I never flew on a plane until I was 20, and that was paid for by the Marine Corps. It would be unfair to hold me to the same standard as Itera, who grew up on the Upper East Side, went to a $50k per year kindergarten, flew on his private jet between his vacation homes in the Hamptons and Aspen, and had his seat in Harvard secure before he was even born.
You still don’t understand what I’ve been saying. It’s not about the quality, it’s the price relative to the quality. If you go to NYU and spend $200-250K to get the same piece of paper I got from Scrub U for $30-40K, then you’re probably going to lose over time in most scenarios. The 200-250 may be low given NYC living expenses. NYU has one of the worst price/quality ratios in the world for most undergrad options. If you want to work on Wall St in NY and can’t get into one of the other feeder schools, NYU is a viable option. But NYU has ~23k undergrad students and they are not all going to end up on Wall Street in any capacity, nor are they even trying for that (probably 1-2% at most are trying for Wall Street). To me, this is the opposite of snobbery, it’s about being realistic and fluent in basic arithmetic (not implying you aren’t, but think about the ROI, it’s horrendously bad).
Also, there is more paperwork and process around taking on a small client than you are probably aware of. It would actually be possible to lose money in taking on a client that is too small. For me to take on a $100,000 client who pays, say, a 1% management fee, I need to complete the paperwork for
Sure, I can get a good education in Madison, Wisconsin, or in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, or in College Station, Texas. But I don’t get exposed to the same cultural experiences or social experiences that I would get in Malibu or New York City.
Getting a good education is good. Getting a good education between the financial district and the theater district of NYC is better.
I guess we value different things then. With the $200K I save, I can spend $2K to go on a vacation for a week one a year for the next 100 years to either Malibu or NYC’s theatre district. It won’t be the immersion you get but I can do a lot with $200K, like put down a serious deposit on a house in most cities in the US, among other things. To each their own though, I respect the difference of opinion.
I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: Cambridge, Oxford or Sorbonne. All these New World schools are so tacky. Sure, go to NYU so you can have the opportunity to network with Anne Hathaway and Oliver Stone, but with Cambridge you can have Prince William (prince), Sir Issac Newton (scientologist), Aliester Crowley (satanist), John Maynard Keynes (businessman) and Nick Drake (rock musician) as references. You can literally do anything. Imagine your MBA application with a recommendation letter from Sir Issac Newton! In
I would not spend that kind of money to go to Pepperdine myself, nor will I pay for my kids to go there, but I can understand the appeal. I have a colleague who drives 80 minutes to work every day because he likes living at the beach. I value my time too much to have that kind of commute, but I understand why he does it.
@Bromion - when you’re talking about career choices and relocation, there’s a huge difference.
For me to go to a job interview at Goldman Sachs in NYC, it would take me an entire day to get there from West Texas. And I’d have to get a hotel room. And figure out how to get around the city. Then it would take me an entire day to get back. Three days of my time for one job interview.
If I live there, then all I do is tell my boss that I have a doctor’s appointment, walk down the street to the interview, then walk back to work.
And what if I actually have to move there? How does an employer know that I’m going to fit in? Maybe I move there for a few months, realize that I don’t like tall buildings and subways, then move away? (FYI–I would never move to NYC. Love to visit, but I’d kill myself if I had to live there.) If I’ve lived there for a few years, they’re taking less of a chance on that.
My kids did a week-long tennis camp at Pepperdine. I help them move in the dorms where thery stayed. The view of the coastline was unbelievable. I told them Fresno St. (where I went) dorms didn’t have that kind of view.
I hope my children do not pick their college based on the view from their dormroon.
Bromion and I are on the same page, i believe. I do a cost / benefit analysis for every purchase I make, from cereal to professional services. Why shouldn’t I do the same if I am paying for my kids’ college? If I do, UC Berkley at 12K a year is the choice over Stanford at 40K a year all day long. Not even close, in my book. But Stanford is prettier, so that is what worries me.
Maybe I shouldn’t worry about it anyway: her chances of getting into Stanford are 50/50 at best.
I am absurdly cheap and measure the cost-benefit of everything. Clearly, a university education is an excellent example of where anyone should run a cost-benefit analysis but I probably take it too far. I’m one of those people who goes to the deli to get a sandwich and won’t get cheese on it because it costs an extra $0.50 and damn that’s a lot of money, they should include the cheese for free.
Stanford is so close to Cal, you could just take the bus there on the weekends and study for free from the library. I know that’s ridiculous but that’s how my mind works.
Stanford cost-benefit to me is different than Pepperdine or something else. There are certain opportunities that you can get out of Stanford that don’t exist at more than a handful of schools in the world regardless of cost, including Cal (even though Cal is great). Really game changer opportunities. That requires the student to know exactly what they want to do going in and then outcompete some intensively competitive people. But for the right student, it would be worth the money IMO. I have to say though I do know people who went to Stanford and ultimately did things like become public school teachers. I respect public school teachers, but it’s such a waste to go to Stanford and then do that when you have $200K of student loans. That’s capital destruction.
I think it is important to guide your kids to best education. I am not gonna lie, i couldve went to MIT or Harvard, but my parents didn’t tell me anything and when i cam to US, i just went with all the friends from High school to local college. I didnt even bother applying to any good colleges
Sometimes it’s important to be with the other snobs. Because who you know is how you get to a good job and career.
It’s not that hard work and good performance isn’t a viable route too. But working hard and performing well doesn’t help as much if you can’t find the right people to notice it.
That said, it’s hard to see why Pepperdine should cost roughly the same as Harvard, and how that is good value. However, that’s a decision that’s made by an 18 year old (though the family might have financial veto power). What is the statute of limitations on bad decisions made in your teens (assuming they aren’t criminal or involve deaths)? Yes, it follows you the rest of your life, but life is long and other things matter too. I’m a completely different person today than I was at 18. I suspect most of you are too (those who are older than 18).
People evolve in life.
Perhaps the Pepperdine folks are not all that brilliant, but are simply competent at most stuff. In that case, it’s more important to know other rich people (like in Malibu) than it is to be able to beat CSK in a programming contest.
In finance, that’s not a bug. It’s a feature. Empathy is for bleeding heart losers. Empathy is what stops you from taking the maximum from those who lack bargaining power.
For what it’s worth, I would rather have lived at Berkeley than at Stanford. Palo Alto is very boring if you are a student. Most people spend all their time on campus. It is inconvenient to leave campus, and once you are in town, you can’t afford anything.
However, it’s still worth going to Stanford, even if it’s $100k, $150k or $200k more expensive. The most valuable thing in my education was being exposed to top 0.001% people. No matter how good you think you are, someone there will make you feel like shit, just from their sheer talent. You will not find many of these people outside a handful of undergraduate schools; they are so talented that they get into almost every school they apply to. 90% of students are the same between Berkeley and Stanford, but the top 1% is entirely different.
In terms of the cost savings… if your focus is really to make as much money as possible, then you will earn it back. It’s not like Cal is that cheap nowadays anyway.