I wasn't aware that "elite of the elite" included many public schools that aren't even that difficult to get into. If you're a California resident UCSD, UCI, UCB, UCLA, UCSB are all accessible schools that give you a very solid shot at a FAANG job out of college. If you're a Michigan resident, same goes for UMich. Illinois, UIUC. Georgia, Georgia Tech. Texas, any number of great state schools. These schools are not that difficult to get into. They're also public, so there is no legacy shenanigans happening to boost wealthy applicants.

If you grew up in a shitty high school, you can go to a community college and then transfer to one of these state schools. I know for certain California has excellent policies that favor CC applicants transferring in. There are multiple ways in the door if you apply yourself.

Perhaps consider that a student that can't even get into a state school has no business or ability to write code at a level that would merit a 250k salary. The bar is on the floor.

That was literally me. Went to community college and, as you say, had a much easier time transferring to a UC. I wasn’t even among the smartest graduates in my program — not by a long shot. And yet, opportunities abound.

Like I said, the software engineering job market is red hot right now. I rejected a few offers and they still asked me a few months later if I would be interested in joining. That’s how desperate they are for anyone with even a reasonable amount of talent.

Fwiw, while Ga Tech is not that difficult to get in to, their undergrad CS program is that difficult to graduate from.

Which again supports the idea that it's about applying yourself and not about privilege or any other excuse that people use to justify their own shortcomings.

It’s definitely not atypical when you’re talking about over a million people combined. That’s a pretty big population.

Milion people graduate from those top 10 universities every year? How big are those universities????

Exactly. Even if we take MIT which seems to graduate AT MOST 10,000 students each year -- times 10 (10x)-- it's only 100,000 graduates. The 1 million comes from where?

They did reply earlier that they meant all people in US but later deleted the comment.

Ah, yeah I didn't see that :)

But we are specifically talking about graduates being paid quarter of a million dollars, so why are you bringing absolute numbers into the mix? Should I compare it against the absolute number of people working everywhere in the world? Because then that million won't be so large suddenly.

If you want to do this properly tell me how many graduates out of all graduates per year get paid quarter of a million dollars when they start. Because it will be such an insignificant number that again - using the word "typical" to describe it will be just delusional.

I was paid nearly $200k on graduation. And I was the least paid out of all my classmates, because I went to Seattle instead of Silicon Valley.

The Median Income in King County, where you work, is 90k / year. That's absurdly high in this country; but it's still less than HALF what you make. Check yourself.