Could you tell which of your friends at school would end up rich?

[gollyquinn]

or which ones would be successful?

Thinking back to my group of friends at school - those of us who went to uni - it was obvious who would end up being wealthy. Yet equally there were some who you’d never expect.

One girl friend of mine really changed in her late 20s and started a lingerie related business which she’s sold for millions. In her early 20s she was a crazy party animal and working odd jobs.

A guy friend from school was lovely but really quite geeky, went to Cambridge to study history, became a lawyer and now is a partner at a law firm raking in millions a year. He was obviously always a star.

For the most part, yes.

Couple of exceptions were two girls who were very gifted at a whole range of subjects - could have got into to Oxbridge for about 8 different degrees - but who struggled to pick one thing and stick to it. Both did well at university but took a long time afterwards to find their thing and are unlikely at this point to achieve great heights in their career

Based on school performance, No.
I went to an academic school.
The ultra smart ones are working in academia making peanuts or doing "okay" working as a GP doctor

Based on parents wealth, broadly yes.
Those that had capital to help them started businesses and several of those have done well.
Even the useless ones are very wealthy as they just have people to manage their (parents) money for them so have a sldecent income.

Not very PC but the extremely attractive & middle class girls have all married extremely wealthy men, not a posh school, so outliers on being middle class.

Yes, but based on personality rather than academic achievements, which played less of a role.

The lazy ones are still mostly drifting along, the driven ones have generally succeeded at what they wanted (be that an academic career or travelling the world), the complainers still complain and many are just average people living a pretty average life.

There was one awful boy at my primary school - the thug of the year - I was petrified of him. He barely attended and would have been written off as heading for prison.
He’s now a household name pop star - don’t know his worth but presumably multi millionaire. Would never have seen it coming at school.

Not really...my clever hard working friend ended up as a hospital Dr whose partner is also a Dr (not in the least bit surprised), my cheeky laid back friend ended up as a solicitor.

My uni friends a lot of them were/are very clever academically but ended up working for charities/NGOs.

(I'd consider the charity/NGO successful just probably not particularly well paid)

It's not something I ever put much thought into. I'm from a working class area and there was a severe recession in the '80s when I was in my teens. There were huge numbers of people emigrating from Ireland. Our teachers (and our parents, for that matter) didn't have very high expectations for us. If we didn't end up as teenage mothers (the girls) or in prison (the boys), then we were succeeding at life.

No one ended up rich. It was a sink estate school with a lot of deprivation. I’m only in touch with two people from my schooldays and didn’t live in my home country for many years, but the occasional classmate I recognise on the street if I’m visiting my parents looks like they’ve had a hard time. The girl I used to sit next to in maths in my final year was in jail for drug offences last I heard. That I could possibly have predicted.

Exactly this. No one had expectations for us. We all knew we were emigrating.

The richest (now) of the kids I was at school with was also the biggest twat as a kid. A bully, cheat and thief. I think I can see a pattern - a lot of the most boring dullards then are councillors or bank managers in places like Banstead or Stoneleigh etc. Mostly Tories but one Lib Dem. Someone I hardly remember is a well known artist and has been on the TV, and someone in the year above me is a very well known singer in a music band.

Yeh, I remember when I was 16 and my friend from school said to me "I want to be earning 40 k pa by the time I'm 25" so she felt that was achievable, ie 3 years after leaving university, quite a conservative prediction she thought.

I remember believing it would happen for her (but not for me, I knew that)

My parents were hassling me to do a secretarial course. I did. Waste of time.
I'm earning 40 k now! 37 years after our conversation! 😅

From primary school (very deprived area) the most successful has been the lad that joined aged 7 not being able to speak English. He had such a lovely family and he was so driven to earn money from an early age- he’s a dentist now and I think he owns a few practices and his little sister is a doctor, always knew they would do well.

High school in a much nicer area and all the kids from wealthy parents have done well for themselves. Lots of the parents bought them their own flats in London for university so they had the space to study.

No idea how most people are doing. I do find it funny that there are two or three guys who seem to be doing the whole 'Business Guru' thing, touting themselves on linkedin as speakers and workshop leaders. One of whom I've been told for a fact has had several failed businesses behind him, but of course, he can call himself a 'multipe startup founder' - I suspect the other one is probably the same.

Yes. Some were more studious and had ambition i guess that was the main difference

A boy in my primary school class became head boy of the local grammar school, having come to England when he was 10. He went on to have a high flying career.
A girl in my grammar class, also an immigrant, was very clever and always did extra work. She went on to have a high flying career and marry into a well known family.
Everyone else that I know of has done averagely.

Yep. None of them. And I was right.

Yes. The two who went to study dentistry both drive Ferraris.

None of my friends from state school. In fact I'd be surprised if a couple of them were still alive.
In the private school I went to previously, (full AP) I think every single one of them! Well, you'd hope so after all that money spent.

I went to a very academic focused grammar school so everyone in my friendship group was relatively intelligent.

What I have found interesting is that 20 years later it’s not the top tier of fiercely intelligent A* across the board types who are necessarily the most successful in terms of earnings.

Instead it’s the ‘all rounders’ who were academic yes, but were also popular and often sporty who are generally successful and earning very highly now. Which does make sense when you think about it - most successful careers require you to be an effective communicator and a people person to an extent, rather than just being the most intelligent person in the room.

No. I went to a state school and the wealthiest male has a very successful business he built up from nothing, he was near the bottom of every class and was a trouble maker too. The wealthiest female was very quiet, very ordinary, married a rich man who died young and left her everything. The rest have mixed success, some of them have good jobs, a few have their own small businesses , mostly just normal mid range jobs though, some on benefits long term.

Yep.

They were the ones who were from the wealthiest families in the first place.

Indeed yes

The ones that went to prison I could have 100% predicted. The one boy that I know is now considerably wealthy started his own construction business. At school he was academically average and very quiet, so that was unexpected.

The child of two wealthy medical consultants has unsurprisingly taken the same career path.

Although a girl from a couple of years below me from quite a poor background married into a fairly well to do family. Not the aristocracy but very solidly middle class. She was unusually attractive, though.