Week 7: How Much Does Class Matter?

I think class matters a lot in the U.S. today. We all probably have stories similar to the ones posted on the “People Like Us” website. I particularly identified with the girl who was an “Army Brat” and moved all around, only to end up in an affluent area where her Dad was not as elite as he was in her other neighborhoods.

But I’ve got a great example of how class can have an impact on your life – it’s actually my husband’s story. My husband grew up on Staten Island in New York City. He did not live on Todt Hill (as the fiancée in the clip on the “People Like Us” website), but he lived in a single-family home in a nice neighborhood. His father was an elementary school principal in Chinatown in Manhattan. His mother was a high school Spanish teacher. You could call his upbringing middle-middle-class. When my husband was in 8^th grade, his parents had him take a test and apply to a high school in Manhattan called Regis. Regis is an all-boys Catholic high school that is free to those who are accepted, based on their test scores. My husband got in and started taking the ferry and subway to school every day. During his senior year, he applied to some colleges and, while he was disappointed that he didn’t get into his first choice, Princeton, as many of his friends did, he ended up deciding to go to his safety school – another Ivy League college. After college, he moved around a bit, attended business school, and after many years of working in large banks around the country, he was finally named CEO of a bank.

What does this story tell us about class? Well, my husband will be the first to tell you that education is everything. And I’m not talking about the quality of the education. I’m talking LOCATION. Believe it or not, when interviewing for jobs recently, my husband was often asked about the high school he attended. The high school, people. Because the high school he attended had a good reputation, he was able to attend an Ivy League college where he met and befriended people from all over the world, from all income levels. He has maintained those friendships and, in this day and age, networking for jobs could not be more important. Having connections in high places has had a huge impact on his (and my!) life.

A couple years ago, I was talking with a former employer of mine and he told me proudly that his daughter had aced her SATs and had been accepted to the University of Maryland on a full scholarship and also to Brown (no scholarship). When I told my husband that my boss’s daughter had chosen a full ride at Maryland over paying for Brown, he couldn’t believe it. He didn’t see why anyone would value saving a buck now over the experience of attending the country’s most elite college. He just didn’t get it. His “pedigree,” if you will, has gotten him pretty far. You see, in his eyes, if you attend Brown, you get to build relationships with all sorts of amazing, smart, rich, powerful, and creative people. Throughout the rest of your life, you’ll have a connection with these people who could potentially one day help you in any number of situations.

I went to a regular, non-Ivy-League college, so I don’t have the perspective that my husband has. I think I did alright without it. But this is just one example of a guy who was born into a middle working class family and, through luck or intelligence or who-knows-what was able to rise up to the next level.