[throwawayadvsec]

The US are a younger country and it's full of immigrants/children of immigrants.

Most of the money here is old money. There are dozens of implicit rules. In France having a teacher as a parent is a better indicator of whether you'll get into a top school than being rich. Because you have to know all the tricks in the book to get anywhere. From my POV getting into Ivy League seems as simple as getting a high SAT, applying, getting approved for a loan. In France, most immigrants kids don't even know the possible paths to get into a top school.

Also yes, salary plays a big role, if you're part of the top 1% of your country intellectual elite, I'd bet you'd rather cross an ocean for 6 figures than for 2000 euros a month and free healthcare.

[mlinhares]

That's 100% NOT how to enter an Ivy League college, there's a lot of preparation, planning and "tips and tricks" you get by hiring people specialized in "college applications" to get there. The odds you'll get to an Ivy League college without help from college admission consultants and careful planning is pretty close to 0.

[AbrahamParangi]

Yeah that’s just not true. You can just get good scores and grades, with the caveat here that “good” means atleast 99.5th percentile.

Under those conditions I’d estimate your odds of getting into at least one Ivy (or equivalently good school) at around 50%, which might seem low but remember 99.6% of college students do not attend an ivy.

[hot_gril]

I know an unusually high number of people who went to Ivy Leagues, and none of them had just good grades, in fact some of their grades weren't great at all. They had some special factor. On the other side, the people I knew with absolutely perfect grades and 2400 SAT (this was before the 1600 scale) and no other angles didn't get into a single Ivy League, but still got into very good schools.

[AbrahamParangi]

Yeah I mean, there is a range of outcomes. That said, if you are in the top 99.5% or higher numerically you have quite a good shot.

[hot_gril]

I just wouldn't say 50%, more like 10%. Again for actual Ivy Leagues only, not top non-Ivy schools like CMU or Berkeley.

[true_religion]

I got into an Ivy League just by getting a high GPA and SAT. I was also in a bunch of clubs but after school activities were pretty popular at my school so that didn't stand out.

[dublinben]

That may be the case for undistinguished applicants with no particular outstanding qualities who need to set themselves apart from the rest of the crowd. Everyone I know who attended an Ivy came from an underrepresented background of one kind or another, and got in simply on their credentials.

[hot_gril]

If you're from the right background then sure. Asian or Mid Eastern (so like the entire largest continent) isn't going to help you, though.

[hot_gril]

Yeah. The high scores alone can get you into some top universities like Berkeley, but not Ivy League or certain others like Stanford.

[dragonwriter]

> From my POV getting into Ivy League seems as simple as getting a high SAT, applying, getting approved for a loan.

Your POV is simply, factually, wrong; more people get high SATs and apply to the Ivy League schools than they can admit by a wide margin, and there are a lot of tricks (many of which leverage accidents of birth, wealth, and social circle) beyond that which go to getting to the top of the list.

The bigger ones involve the hyper rich buying buildings, and the merely very rich engaging in bribery which is higher risk when discovered, but legacies, padding applications with extracurrriculars for which opportunities are very much not equal, etc., all play a role.

[HWR_14]

For the hyperrich, setting aside 10 or 20 admissions for "idiots who bring new science buildings with them" seems to benefit literally everyone at the school.

[patmorgan23]

The Ivy's all have multi-billion dollar endowments. They should go without a single donor dollar for a generation and be fine And even expand.

[true_religion]

Sure but why stop a practice that is working so well already? It's just 10 slots out of 100s.

[MagnumOpus]

It's over 200 out of about 2000 at Harvard, plus another 200 for athletes... Though of course the bigger issue is that Harvard only has 2000 places for undergrad despite a $50bn endowment, in order to create some artificial scarcity.

[HWR_14]

200 people in each class at Harvard donated buildings to get in? That seems hard to believe.

[dragonwriter]

That “over 200” is for legacies, not building donators, right?

[hot_gril]

> The bigger ones involve the hyper rich buying buildings, and the merely very rich engaging in bribery which is higher risk when discovered, but legacies, padding applications with extracurrriculars for which opportunities are very much not equal, etc., all play a role.

Legacy and extracurricular are the big ones. Very, very few people are buying buildings or bribing.

[dragonwriter]

By “big” I meant showy, not common or broadly used.

[brainfish]

A high SAT score is table stakes for Ivy application, not in any way a free pass. Successful applicants generally need impeccable grades, documented community service + extracurricular activities, stellar recommendations, etc. Or alternatively, be a "legacy", meaning your ancestors attended that school, which is more often than not a proxy for "be rich."

I don't doubt your characterization of the situation in France at all, and there are certainly a plethora of great universities in the U.S. that have reasonably accessible admissions, but the "top" schools (Ivys, MIT/Caltech, etc.) are certainly beyond the reach of many, and favor those who know how to play their game.

[freeopinion]

I do not know if your POV is that of somebody who actually attended an Ivy League school. If so, it is understandable that you see through your lens. You got a high SAT and got in. If not, it is still an understandable view. Everyone you've heard of that got in had a high SAT.

Here's a different view. More than 2 million people take the SAT each year. The top 1% score between 1550 and 1600. They number more than 20000 people each year. You can have straight As K-12, achieve a 1570 on the SAT, be president/captain of three clubs/teams, play two musical instruments, be a National Merit Scholar, serve on the board of some national organization, win 12 state championships, and still not get accepted to an Ivy League school. Or you can have a B here and there, score a 1500 SAT and get accepted.

My point is that it is not as simple as getting a high SAT, applying, and getting approved for a loan.

[ttoinou]

   In France having a teacher as a parent is a better indicator of whether you'll get into a top school than being rich.

They believe more in the education system so they push their kids more into higher education. Most of the high education school in france have a somewhat fair competitive exam to filter the candidates

[throwawayadvsec]

>They believe more in the education system so they push their kids more into higher education.

No, not really, most people seems to still believe it.

>Most of the high education school in France have a somewhat fair competitive exam to filter the candidates

Yet preparatory schools are still disproportionately full of rich white kids.

[ttoinou]

Ive been in scientific preparatory schools, you only stay there if you're genuinely good. Causation != Correlation

[vladvasiliu]

> In France, most immigrants kids don't even know the possible paths to get into a top school.

What do you mean? As an immigrant to France when I was in 3rd grade [0], I knew in a couple of months that I had to go to a good high-school, to get into a good prep school, to get into a good grande école. Everybody knows this. And everybody knows how to get there: be good at math, and have good grades in general.

[0] In France, school grades are "reversed". Grades 6 to 3 are "collège" / middle school / junior high. Grades 2, 1, "terminal" are high-school.

[fuklief]

I personally did not know about classes prépa before the last year of high school. I will forever be thankful for my maths teacher who told me about it that year, since I would have probably slacked off at university.

[throwawayadvsec]

I know people from the suburbs who didn't even know what a prep school was until they were adults.

[mytailorisrich]

Blame their parents and their own lack of interest.

[dustincoates]

As an immigrant to France who wants my kids to succeed… how do I learn these paths?

[FirmwareBurner]

Have 2 hour lunch breaks and a strike, or just emigrate to french speaking part of Switzerland? /s

[vladvasiliu]

Make sure they're good at math, and have good grades in high-school so they can get selected to a good "prépa". Make sure they don't slack off in prépa.

[prmoustache]

Make them move abroad. [1]

I kind of slacked off when I was in post secondary school, I didn't go to "classe prépa" but did a DUT because I was bored of studies, still ended up afterwards in an engineering school after my DUT because my parents kind of pushed me to contest for an entry. I ended up even more bored, fell in love with a girl I met that was living in another country, dropped from the engineering school after the first year, moved abroad to join her, applied there for a job, got it at first interview. Being motivated in a work environment (compared to a more meaningless to me educationnal one), I quickly climbed the echelons to be considered an "engineer" in the industry meaning, without having an actual engineering degree. I did so during the few years it takes someone to finish engineering/grandes écoles and find an actual job in France.

I learned that in many places outside of France having a few years more work experience and verifiable credentials is actually more valuable than a nice degree when applying for a job being 25 and that at 35 nobody cares anymore what degree you got in the first place.

[1] I am taking the assumption that your kids will or have already obtained french nationality and a european passport.

[fuklief]

- Make them good at science, i.e., Maths and Physics.

- Get them into a decent high school, e.g., Henri 4 or Louis Le Grand in Paris.

- Hope they have good grades and manage to get into a good preparatory class [1], e.g., Henri 4, Louis Le Grand in Paris, or Hoche and Sainte-Geneniève in Versailles.

- Make sure they don't slack off, and hope they get into a good engineer school, e.g., Ecole Polytechnique, Ecole des Mines, Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussés, CentraleSupelec.

(Lists are not exhaustive)

If they manage to get into one of these schools, they will most likely end up not have any difficulty to find a somewhat well-paid job in France.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classe_pr%C3%A9paratoire_aux_g...

[yaantc]

You can find some guides on the topic, for example: https://www.letudiant.fr/etudes/classes-prepa.html.

Very often, when a kid is good enough its school main teacher will mention the possibility of going to a prépa: it's good for a school reputation when they can send kids to prépas.

For sure it's better when the parents are already in the known, but it wasn't the case for me and it was not a show stopper. There's plenty of public information and the importance of "grandes écoles" in France is not a secret.

[throwawayadvsec]

When I talk about these paths, I mostly mean prepas and grande écoles, but that doesn't mean I recommend them.

Yeah you're set for life if you succeed there, but the student suicide rate in those schools is also astonishingly high because of the pressure/competition.

If I were you, I'd just teach my kids to code, learn, build stuff, sell stuff, and use AI correctly. IMO school is an outdated concept, in any country.

[ant6n]

Move to Quebec.

[eldaisfish]

Terrible idea if you are not white, do not have a French surname or are visibly muslim.

[ant6n]

Worse than France? Doubt it. In Quebec You mostly need to speak properly.

Plus, if you have French citizenship, u get cheap access to some pretty good universities.

[mytailorisrich]

> In France, most immigrants kids don't even know the possible paths to get into a top school.

Not true.

What happens, and not only in France (it's like that in the UK as well), is that primary and secondary schools that are in not very good areas are not ambitious for their pupils. They'll say average is fine, going to a technical college is very good, etc. so in the end those pupils do not think of taking the "high road" because they've been convinced it is not for them.

On the other hand, if your parents are highly educated and you go to one of the top secondary schools you'll be pushed and told that you should work hard and that you can get into a top university.

[throwawayadvsec]

>is that primary and secondary schools that are in not very good areas are not ambitious for their pupils.

And where do you think the vast majority of immigrants live? In Boulogne Billancourt?

[mytailorisrich]

I am sure you understand that not taking a path is not the same as not knowing the path...

[htrp]

> From my POV getting into Ivy League seems as simple as getting a high SAT, applying, getting approved for a loan

It's more like the teacher in France example, except you also have to be rich.