[larrys]

Agree but then doesn't that make it all relative?

For example let's take someone that is a local judge. She/he is "high achieving" enough to go to law school and be elected or appointed a judge. But they want their child to become a federal judge. Or perhaps the judge went to Temple Law but wants his child to go to Penn Law.

Maybe the local judge (or small businessman) is only "small potatoes" (in their mind) because of something that prevented them from ever "going farther" with their career. Or a health problem or a family obligation. And so on. So they would like to see their child to become, say "a big business person running a major corporation" instead of just a small local merchant or someone with a warehouse in the local industrial park.

I happen to know of a person that is a district attorney in a major city on the east coast. Their mother tried and failed to win a local political office. She was an attorney. Father owned a chain of stores in malls. Both parents were very high achieving (live in the best neighborhood in the suburbs) but by all metrics 2 of 3 three children have done much better. And there is no doubt (from person knowledge) they live vicariously through these children.

[rayiner]

But doesn't that reduce to parents' just wanting their kids to do better than they did?

[larrys]

I think that's similar but different.

In those communities what others think in the community is very important.

As a result parents like nothing more than to "elevate" themselves by bragging about what their child has done.

So for example someone can truly want their child to do "better than they did" but also separately want to be able to have bragging rights to their friends and neighbors that "my child just graduated from Harvard". To me these are two separate motivations.

Elevation is a very important concept I have found that explains why, for example, even though I don't care if someone is clerking for SCOTUS (you might of course) that I will gladly tell that fact to someone else in order to impress them. "Oh we went to dinner with Jane's she's clerking for Scalia". (Actually I do care I think it's impressive but I'm trying to illustrate a point here).

My perspective is based btw on growing up in an immigrant family and what I have observed.

[prostoalex]

It's not cultural, it's a societal perspective. Not sure about other countries, but at least in India there's a secondary education test that everyone has to take http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_India_Secondary_School_Exam...

Results are published, and colleges then make their decisions based on the results of those test. If you don't outperform your peers, your pathway to a good career will get significantly more complicated.