Are you lost? This is a forum basically exclusively for people working in tech, a disproportionate fraction of whom are tech founders. If you're in this line of work and making anything vaguely resembling median income, you've fucked up terribly.
It seems like you are trying to insult me and I'm not sure why. However, I will address the issue you raised regardless. The typical tech worker makes far less than you seem to believe.
BLS didn't normalize the above data to show the Bay Area where it's fairly common to break $400-500k TC by your late 20s/early
30s.
Furthermore, at least in the Bay Area Asian American community, both spouses are working these roles (or adjacent high paying roles like Medicine, Dentistry, High Finance, etc).
US population is stable, enrollment has increased, and all of these universities have been prestigious for a while.
I understand that UCs have pivoted to pseudo-private school status by increasing tuition and international student admissions have gotten more competitive. CS has gotten harder to get in as a major, but has the university as a whole gotten more selective ?
I can't see why things would suddenly get a lot harder for undeclared domestic students. Has the domestic rat-race intensified to such a degree ?
1. The Common Application pervasiveness. When I applied to college (many moons ago), I applied to five schools. Now it's not unheard of for kids to apply to 15-25 schools.
2. While the US population is stable there are more kids going to college than 30 years ago.
3. The "resume" of students is much stronger. As a kid I knew someone who got into MIT whose highest math course was HS Calculus, AB equivalent, but not an AP course -- people weren't surprised at the time. I think you'd be hardpressed to find kids who get in with that now. I know kids who have completed Calc BC as HS freshman. Now that's not common, but it's not super rare either. And what HS kid hasn't created their own non-profit? Or published a paper(s)? The bar just keeps rising. Honestly I don't think its sustainable. HS kids applying to Ivies have better credentials than pretty much all of our country's leaders!
