LogFAQs > #940816055

It's more about the environment. Being in a rich private school will let you associate with other rich people and learn to act like one. You learn the secret handshake that persuades people to give you money and opportunity for prestige.

Go to a school that's less well off, the adults and students you're around act like people who are less well off. You'll imitate their habits, you won't know the secret handshake that persuades people to give you money and opportunity for prestige.

College isn't there to educate you. It's there to teach you to act a certain way sort people into careers, and gatekeep careers. I learned a lot in my physics and math degrees, but I would have learned more significantly more physics and math on my own. I did learn how to have a personality that physicists get along with, learned to say the secret phrases, and have the opinions you expect a physicist to have. Having a lot of interaction with your professors and classmates is extremely important, even more than getting great grades.

Grad school was a joke. When leaving I told my department head that I haven't had such an easy time since high school. They still love me there because I have papers with almost every professor >_<