[paxys]

He went to Princeton because he was smart, not because his family was rich. It isn't a school of billionaires or something. The majority of Ivy League enrollment is regular kids from working class families. They all have the best need-based scholarship programs in the country.

His dad was a Cuban immigrant who worked as an engineer at Exxon.

[ineedasername]

No, most families at Princeton are not typical working class families. The median family income of a student's family is about $180,000.

Yes, if you're accepted, you really don't have to worry about the price tag because of their financial aid. But poorer families are more likely to go to lower quality schools that may not even offer AP courses and do very little test prep. Families are also unable to afford top-tier test prep services either. On average, if you come from a poor family you've probably had to work harder, or be smarter, to get into Princeton.

I'm not saying this is a problem for Princeton to solve. I'm just saying that it's really not an institution highly accessible to middle/lower class. Just take for example the fact that they favor children of past alumni heavily: something like 30% of the class comes from "legacy" students whose parents(s) attended as well.

[starpilot]

HN seems to think most of the world is a meritocracy. The reality is that a dumb rich kid is much more likely to get into a good university than a poor brilliant one. There is a "glass floor": https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jul/26/well-off-fam...

[saiya-jin]

Most of the world, definitely no. When it comes to education (and healthcare etc.), most if not all Europe definitely is.

[yashap]

I don’t disagree that he is/was super smart (and hardworking), but he came from a fairly wealthy family too. When he was starting Amazon, his parents invested $300,000 to help get it off the ground. You don’t have $300K to pour into your son’s startup if you aren’t wealthy. Also, when he was growing up his maternal grandparents owned a 25,000 acre ranch in Texas, which suggests significant wealth too. From what I understand his family wasn’t ultra wealthy, but they were well off.

Creating a mega-successful company is extremely difficult. Most people who do so are incredibly smart, incredibly hard working, got very lucky with the idea they chose to pursue (right place, right time), AND come from a wealthy family that can invest in their idea and make it feel like much less of a risk to found a company. Bezos fits all of these criteria, as do most successful tech founders.

[xxpor]

I seem to remember some study (probably on the front page here) that the most successful people usually don't come from Wealthy with a capital W or poor backgrounds, because in both cases there usually isn't the parental involvement in people's lives needed to instill the right values. This isn't a criticism of poor parents btw, it's just a fact of life for most of them because they're out there surviving.

The most successful people on average have upper middle class/rich but not titan of industries parents. Rich enough that they have time to spend with their kids, pay for tutoring, that sort of stuff, but not rich enough to have the nanny raise the kid.

[yashap]

I haven’t read the study, but that certainly seems believable and reasonable to me.

[runarberg]

Note mentioning that “smart” in this context usually means “able to get a large return on investment”. Making it a redundant trait description.

“Good at business” is a better description. But people aren’t normally satisfied with calling billionaires “good at business” so they add this glittering “smart”, as if he is somehow a better person then you or I, which is a ridiculous statement.

[yashap]

From his Wikipedia page:

> He was high school valedictorian, a National Merit Scholar, and a Silver Knight Award winner in 1982.

> ... In 1986, he graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University with a 4.2 GPA and a Bachelor of Science in Engineering degree (B.S.E.) in electrical engineering and computer science

> ... After Bezos graduated from Princeton University in 1986, he was offered jobs at Intel, Bell Labs, and Andersen Consulting, among others. He first worked at Fitel, a fintech telecommunications start-up, where he was tasked with building a network for international trade. Bezos was promoted to head of development and director of customer service thereafter. He transitioned into the banking industry when he became a product manager at Bankers Trust. He worked there from 1988 to 1990. He then joined D. E. Shaw & Co, a newly founded hedge fund with a strong emphasis on mathematical modelling in 1990 and worked there until 1994. Bezos became D. E. Shaw's fourth senior vice-president at the age of 30.

Yes, he’s very good at business, but he’s clearly very “book smart” too.

[barry-cotter]

> The median family income of a student from Princeton is $186,100, and 72% come from the top 20 percent. About 1.3% of students at Princeton came from a poor family but became a rich adult.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobilit...

[paxys]

$180K is like 1-1.5x the median family income in a high CoL area in the US, so that's actually about what in line with what I would expect. You're not poor, sure, but it's not close to the kind of rich the original comment is implying when clubbing him with billionaires. A kid whose family earns $186K/yr isn't exactly on the fast track to becoming the next Jeff Bezos.

[ineedasername]

About the fast track portion sure, but otherwise, really, no. The median household income in NYC is about $100,000. San Francisco is about $90,000. Even at the high end of your estimate that's falling up to 25% short of $180k.

Also it's really not proper to take the highest cost of living areas in this situation and say "it's okay they're kind of close to $180,000!"

Taking the outliers as examples to support the idea that the average family meets it is close to the median is really a bad comparison. Most of the country doesn't live in those areas. It would only be an appropriate comparison if Princeton received most if their students from those areas, and they don't.

[caddemon]

I agree with your general point but take a look at the map on this page: https://admission.princeton.edu/how-apply/admission-statisti...

Princeton definitely does (unintentionally) bias admissions towards major metro areas. It's just way easier to have a good application in these places.

[cm2012]

Median household income in nyc proper is 50k. It's only 100k if you include the burns further out.

[starpilot]

$180k is not "working class," period. I don't make $180k and I live in Seattle working in a tech-adjacent field. You claiming that it is is like saying a 14 year old is almost 15 which is almost legal driving age and basically an adult in terms of responsibility, so it's pretty much the age of the majority at 18.

I went to a big state school that was respectable but not Princeton. I still wouldn't say most students there were from the "working class" by the common definition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_class

> The working class (or labouring class) comprises those engaged in waged or salaried labour, especially in manual-labour occupations and industrial work.

How many Princeton kids had parents who worked construction? Plumbing, drywalling, tar roofing? I'll guess: very few.

[lwf]

Harvard disagrees with you:

> HARVARD COLLEGE has almost as many students from the nation’s top 0.1 percent highest-income families as from the bottom 20 percent. More than half of Harvard students come from the top 10 percent of the income distribution, and the vast majority—more than two-thirds—come from families in the top 20 percent.

https://harvardmagazine.com/2017/01/low-income-students-harv...

(They do have great financial aid for low-income families)

[solipsism]

> The majority of Ivy League enrollment is regular kids from working class families

HN does so much moderation, with dang slapping people for being nasty. Why is obvious, egregious misinformation like this not subject to moderation?

[confidantlake]

From my experience misinformation is not moderated much. Saying something rudely is. Tone is more important than content when it comes to moderation here. I have sympathy for the moderators because is much easier to tell if something is rude versus if it is untrue. However the downside is that you can post lies and vile comments as long as you are polite about it.

[vixen99]

No, the smart thing to do is to let readers do the job with comments that show up such nonsensical statements. This is how we get to the truth, not by authoritarian censorship (as against the application of reasonable rules for a site like HN).

[gkya]

That's a nice song you're playing to yourself.