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Originally Posted by iheartthed
I'm not entirely sure that I understand the criteria here for measuring elitism... but I don't think the Northeast is more elitist than anywhere else. I would say that New York is actually less elitist than Detroit. There is far more intermingling of the classes here in NY than Detroit. My social network here ranges from multi-millionaires to construction workers. NYC also does upward mobility far better than Metro Detroit, which means the ranks of the upper classes get refreshed on a regular basis.
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I see what you're saying, but the regions have different cultural currency, and I can see the Northeastern currency viewed as "elitist" from a Midwestern lens. Where you attended college matters more, and upbringing, knowledge and social mores have weight. Nothing like in the UK or in class-based societies, but it still matters. In Michigan, this would generally be considered very frou-frou, elitist and weird. Even the University of Michigan/Ann Arbor is kind of a bizarre island in Michigan.
In my first job after college, at a bulge bracket bank, a majority of the sales/trading hires were from Ivies, and mostly played sports, and very frequently played lacrosse, squash or crew. This was even true for women and nonwhites (add in field hockey for the women, football for blacks and fencing and tennis for Asians). That's way too specific hiring to assume anything other than endlessly regenerating legacy-based hierarchies.
This was 20 years ago, and things have likely changed a bit, but I'm comfortable asserting that if you want to work for an investment bank out of college, the best path is to attend a highly selective name university and if you want sales/trading, also play an intercollegiate sport.