New York City ILXOR)RS - Is this city becoming 100% exclusive to the elite?

I have absolutely never seen an Ivy League requirement on a job posting, ever. Are you sure you're not imagining things?

P.S. I went to an Ivy for grad school and up until last year my copywriting job paid less than ten dollars an hour, in NYC, so I wouldn't count on that particular "elite" making much of a difference.

That and the fact that it's getting expensive as hell.

What I received today:

Position: Copywriter -Web
Location: Manhattan
Status: Freelance
Estimated Duration: Days
Starts: ASAP
Rate: $30-35 per hour

Job Description:
Our client is a direct marketing firm that specializes in credit card statement inserts. They are searching for a freelance copywriter. You MUST be an Ivy League Grad and Journalism students with ad agency experience are highly favored. Search Engine Optimization writing experience is a plus.

This is the third "Ivy League" requirement I've seen this week, and every week they show up more and more often. I'm stuck commuting to Jersey now, making more than what most of those jobs offered.

Competition's tough in New York, but it's getting crazy now. Time to find a new line of work.

I'm surprised: that's a crap way of pool-narrowing, and I can't imagine it'd get you any better a set of candidates. I can think of plenty of ways it'd get you worse ones, actually. Besides which that rate isn't even so great.

hahahaha "ivy league grad" in these instances means some poor fool who will take peanuts

"listen we can't afford competitive rates but we know you'll love working in this environment surrounded by other elite folks just like you"

$35 -- that's about a fiver isn't it?

haha -- for a moment, i thought that this was an ad for either a law firm or an investment bank/hedge fund. (yes, both industries ARE that credentials-snobbish in NYC.)

xpost - But see that's just gonna net them post-grad Brown kids with no experience and probably not the most professional approach to the job -- if it's just a few-days freelance thing, why not offer the same rate to someone who's done it before? (Answer: the job is worth way more than that, and they're hoping for someone who won't notice.)

then again, on a pre-law school job interview i WAS asked (in all seriousness) if my VERY non-ivy league undergrad school was an Ivy League school.

xpost -- I can understand the actual hiring of lawyers being snobbish a whole lot more than sourcing out week-long contract jobs to freelance writers: anyone on earth* can testify to high-level education being no indicator of the ability to write English.

(* and anyone who's ever proofread high-paid betters)

not that snobbery should be any more effective, compared to merit, with hiring lawyers -- just saying it seems less pointedly stupid

Even these crappy freelance writing gigs are getting all Ivy League snob. Which is my conclusion ... if things are getting this bad, then is NYC basically becoming exclusive to those already at the top? It's starting to feel like you can't "make it here" anymore - you have to be already made, and if you aren't, the door is shut forever.

I don't believe in nothin no more. I'm going to law school.

adding pointedly half-assed accents of prestigiousness to a job in order to recruit young, doe-eyed talent to come break their balls at your badly-run outfit is as old as the labor market

cf "hey everybody come work at google, who cares if you wind up pulling 110-hour weeks, we have free food and t-shirts and we're fucking GOOGLE, have you seen our home page?"

it's not altogether different than the schtick the Ivies pull on high school kids really

used to work for the federal government and the armed services, too!

Well, it's this great economy, isn't it? Cost of living is up in all areas and average income is less than it was 6 years ago.

(I get that for hiring, Tom, but for a one-off freelance gig it's just dumb.)

that's a good point, but it might be a bait-and-switch to net a fulltimer who'll be willing to kill themselves for the "opportunity"

IT IS TRUE! FACT: EAST NEW YORK NOW 85% POPULATED BY IVY LEAGUE OR SEVEN SISTERS GRADUATES. QUEENSBORO PROJECTS OVERRUN W/PHD CANDIDATES. FAR ROCKAWAY SIGHT OF VIGOROUS ACADEMIC ONE-UPS-MANSHIP.

CONEY ISLAND, FUTURE HOME OF THE WORLD'S FIRST ALL-TIMBER SUPERCOLLIDER

Staten Island, America's #1 source of top biotech talent

Ah, feed yr Ivy League grads to the Newtown Creek Blob That Will Eat You All.

So basically you're saying that now would be a good time for me to try to break into freelance writing?

NEWTOWN CREEK BLOB RELOCATES TO PHILADELPHIA. REASON: UNEMPLOYABLE DUE TO INFERIOR STATE-SCHOOL BACHELORS DEGREE.

DAN PERRY SET TO DOMINATE WRITING FIELD FOR NEW CENTURY.

I'm just going to keep riding on the Boston College/Boston University mixups.

U BETTER HOPE THEY MIX IT UP WITH HARVARD. DIAGNOSIS: BURGER KING NITE MANAGER.

haha btw HEY IVY LEAGUERS MY SCHOOL IS MORE EXPENSIVE THAN YOURS take that

- EL TOMBOTO, MASTER OF SCIENCE

I'm sure that $30/hour on an irregular freelance basis is REALLY tempting Dan right now.

It's more than I make singing!

I LIVE IN NYC AND I DID NOT ATTEND COLLEGE. PLZ DO NOT ALERT AUTHORITIES.

Hey, my mum is an Ivy League grad. I'll reccomend it to her - it's certainly more than she makes as a priest!

Well actually it probably isn't, but it's a better hourly rate.

Hey, there's a burger king near my house! $$$$

I am not selling candy for no basketball team, I am selling this candy for myself so I can put money in my pocket and stay out of trouble

FREE WHOPPERS W/CHEESE.

gainful employment at the tendercrisp bacon cheddar ranch.

GIVING ORDERS TO SEXY TEENS.

xpost
Oh it SOUNDS like a lot, but once you figure you won't be billing 40 hours a week every week of the year, and you won't get an accountant so great as to make self-employment taxes not exist, you're probably coming home with the same $45k as a nice office job. Which -- don't get me wrong -- is great, except then you have to buy health insurance, and you're pretty much where you started.

those kids and homeless dudes make some insane money. I saw a homeless guy roll up this huge wad of bills in this money clip, tip his crumpled top hat to some ladies, and then strolled away cane in hand.

NEWTOWN CREEK BLOB RELOCATES TO PHILADELPHIA. REASON: UNEMPLOYABLE DUE TO INFERIOR STATE-SCHOOL BACHELORS DEGREE.

the newtown creek blob will have the last laugh, then ...

... on the other hand, there are plenty of credentials-snobs in philly too (it's the place that gave the world Wharton, after all. and the Main Line is, if anything, even MORE snooty than Westchester. and then there are all of the snooty Manhattanites who are beginning to infest the place b/c that $1M Rittenhouse Square/Society Hill townhouse is a "bargain" compared to the comparable property in Manhattan or Brooklyn Heights.)

YES BUT THE OPPORTUNITY TO WORK WITH CREDIT CARD COMPANIES. SOMETIMES PERKS COME IN THE FORM OF PIECE OF MIND.

they DO say that membership has its privileges, you know ...

mr. butch* had a vespa! that other people bought for him!

*famous boston homeless dude, he dead RIP.

is Boston credentials-snobby? I've never had that impression (other than a general preference for people who went to school in Boston) but then I have also never had a real full-time job here.

AMEX BLACK CARD ENSURES SUPERIOR EXPERIENCE. IVY LEAGUE GRADS ONLY NEED APPLY.

MR BUTCH: LIFE OF THE PARTY!

he needed weed.

not terribly well

what can i say? i didn't go to an ivy.

I've never even had an ivy plant.

well you're CLEARLY on the outs, then.

zzzzzzzz

you know... there was a time when this shit got me down because i'm just a party school state univ. grad ... but honestly, on the other end of the stack about 10-15 years into my career (or whatever this monkey fest is called)... i can tell you that uh... it's bullshit.

don't analyze job postings. "we want superman" = "we're not desperate for employees", "we don't pay shit and want something for nothing", etc etc. you actually don't want to work for a company like that from that angle.

seriously... the BEST candidates already have jobs. the BEST candidates never have to job hunt and barely do their entire lives.

folks that i went to school with have their dream jobs and are doing insane shit. (and they were high most of the time!)

work hard, chase the shit that makes you bat happy at all costs, and don't stop to worry so much. (that focus is in the wrong direction.)
m.

very late to this thread but fwiw it would be silly to argue with the idea that ivy leagues give lots of advantages, since that's what they sell. and new york is particularly full of ivy grads, for lots of obvious reasons. so.

but i work in a manhattan office full of relatively well-paid editors, writers and designers, and as far as i know nobody in my department is an ivy leaguer (not surprising, considering that all the big journalism programs are at state schools). the farther up you go in the company, the more ivy leaguers you will find, no doubt. but an awful lot of us public-school yahoos are managing to make a living. (at least until the whole industry gets eaten by the internet. but i don't think our digital-side people are very ivy league either.)

also in re this:
not everyone is privleged enough to have the time/money to work on art all day tho.

this is obviously true, but i have several artist friends who came from no money and live on close to no money but have lots of time for art because that's how they've organized their lives. (they mostly don't live in new york, it's true. there are more comfortable places to be a starving artist.) i mean, i think if anything there are way more non-privileged artists now than 100 or 200 years ago, when the arts were almost exclusively the domain of the privileged.

xpost: msp otm

it's great because tom petty : strokes :: vonnegut : prep school emo fucks

THE TRUTH WILL OUT

as tipsy said, something I've always said...even in NY, you set your priorities and guess what, you can live cheap. You can pay very little for rent if you want to live in a less desirable neighborhood(or even, sometimes, a desirable one) with 10 roommates and have very little space, although some of those people manage to have lots of space. You know, some of the musicians who live in NY actually dont have trust funds! They make money tending bar and they live in a shithole or whatever.

Personally, I haven't had a full-time job for 2 years. I freelance anywhere from 1 to 3 weeks out of the month, sometimes it's my choice and sometimes it's not. I couldn't afford to do this if I lived in my old apt in brooklyn, but I live with my girlfriend in Queens, so I can. Sometimes money is tight, sometimes I have enough to buy records or a synthesizer, unless you're disciplined, this kind of lifestyle tends to be feast or famine.

but the idea that NYC is for the elite can be countered pretty much by walking down the street, any street.

OTM both posts thanx dan. I've been living this way for 26 years now

I think the thread got derailed by a less-interesting subquestion: the ivy league/elite influence in the media esp. book publishing which has traditionally been dominated by the old guard tho not exclusively cf. my wife who has had a long fruitful pub career w/o being an ivy league grad or for that matter an east coast bred WASP.

however when I worked at magazines in the 80s and 90s there was a sudden surge of editors & writers who'd gone to harvard or yale and made sure everybody knew about it. my first reaction was "so what" cause I was so stuck in the 60s counterculture it didn't occur to me how the world was changing...fucking SPY magazine was the death of NY "alternative media" in many ways but that's another story.

sour grapes? nah. I still think NYC is a land of opportunity, the sea of possibilities as patt smith said. call me naive and idealistic if you want, it won't be the first (or last) time.

Oh it SOUNDS like a lot, but once you figure you won't be billing 40 hours a week every week of the year, and you won't get an accountant so great as to make self-employment taxes not exist, you're probably coming home with the same $45k as a nice office job. Which -- don't get me wrong -- is great, except then you have to buy health insurance, and you're pretty much where you started.

I was thinking more along the lines of "Wow, an extra $6K to use for a vacation!" than I was about making this my primary profession.

vacations are awesome!

Yeah, Williamsburg is definitely not the cheapest place to live these days. I'm looking at Queens, but all my Brooklyn friends would count me as dead ! :::{ the 7 is the new L they say.

But it's true - among my generation, there are tons of kids who live only for raw paper achievement, and so have resumes of Ivy League schools and 5 year stints living in Brussles, and maaaaan, they want you to know.

There's definitely opportunity here, though, you just gotta hustle and be really good at networking - I've met many a connection at happy hour that I was unprepared to use. : < : <

living in brussels is some sort of achievement?

work hard, chase the shit that makes you bat happy at all costs, and don't stop to worry so much. (that focus is in the wrong direction.)
m.

-- msp, Wednesday, 1 August 2007 04:10 (8 hours ago) Link

MSP DROPPIN' KNOWLEDGE

It's not your generation, it's the type of people you hang out with! There's always been people like that and always will, and there will always be people who don't care. It's all about your personal peer group. I know a few Harvard geeks, all radio station dorks, but other than that I'd say 90% of my peer group went to Oberlin/Wesleyan/Vassar/Bard/etc. That's because that's what I did and that's who I hang out with. It's not some generational shift.

srsly someone answer my question about brussels.

if you youself graduated from an ivy then it superpowers yr ivyness. if you didnt then its of no use to you.

wow this thread is still going huh.

Ha, I just remembered a friend of mine once had a live-in NANNY job where the parents asked her "Why didn't you go to an Ivy?" in the interview.

oh c'mon, brussels is of no use to anyone.

hahaha i have a friend who grew up there and he just sneers at bruxelles and belgium in general "eet is sooo booojwah..."

maybe he meant Prague?

brussels is where we should be sending the army corps of engineers to learn about how to keep sacramento, miami and new orleans on dry land

for those of you complaining about nyc being $$$

http://www.losapson.net/event/070824_tonebugz.html

Hamid Drake solo (w/Braxton, Parker):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlc5zFCbfGE

Whoops, wrong thread.

Elite NYC drummer tho

http://www.losapson.net/event/070824_tonebugz.jpg

http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/davis/davis.report-rockport.jpg

New York City ILXOR)RS - Is this city becoming 100% too jazzy or waht?

OLD SCHOOL BOW TIE CLUB.

the 7 is the new L they say.

i would live in queens or wherever if i knew that i wouldn't be spending my nights out in brooklyn or manhattan. i hate it people they try to shit on willamsburg because it's so expensive. it's not central park west; there are affordable options, you just have to spend a little more time looking for them. also, everyone that lives in bushwick bikes or whatever to williamsburg to go out, anyway, so quit saying it's "dead."

Castup, is that expensive because going out in general is expensive, or the exchange rate?

stencil, i have former parisian friends that still work there and commute four times a week from brussels (1h 20?) because, even with the commute, housing and living are less expensive. it's also only 2.5 hours to Amsterdam. Also, this unbearably attractive choreographer i met recently relocated there because it's "the avant-garde dance capital of the world."

i hate it people they try to shit on willamsburg

er, "i hate it when people try to shit on williamsburg"

I SHIT ON WILLIAMSBURG SO THERE SORRY LOL

Stuart Davis rules!

hamid drake is a ny drummer? when did he move here from chicago?

the secret is....Queens and Brookyn are actually REALLY close to each other. The problem is lack of useful train options. If you live in LIC, you can take the G back and forth. If you have a car, it's a 10 minute drive down greenpoint avenue for me to get to the exciting heart of Greenpoint Brooklyn. People do need to learn that the Pulaski between greenpoint and LIC isn't the only connection, there's the BQE and the little bridge that take you from western greenpoint to Sunnyside/Woodside. And even further the real hipsters can ride their bike from Bushwick to Woodside/Jackson Heights through lovely Maspeth, they can even visit the UPS depot there. And finally, the real hipsters and artists are all moving to Ridgewood. You can have a cheap suburban Queens experience at the end of the L.

xpost sorry you are correct

brussels...the avant-garde dance capital of the world.

PACKING MY BAGS NOW

i'd say it's a pretty appealing advertisement, compared to, say, Detroit, potato chip capital of the world.

or South Africa, rape capital of the world.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-30/banker-roommates-follow-zuckerberg-not-blankfein-with-ivyconnect.html

it's hard for me to imagine any legit "elite" attending something called "IvyConnect" but idk I'm just a little schmo from a big state u

IvyConnect, now based only in New York, plans to attract 10,000 “fascinating individuals” in each of 50 global cities

code for "we have written a free press release for this unproven startup"

damn a social network that connects people who went to the same college why didn't I think of this

ao wait, they plan to have 10,000 members at $200 per year. So there revenue goal is only 2 million a year?

not really the ideal thread, but w/out search -- tonight is the last night to stay in the Waldorf Astoria, or just wander around, before it's renovated/mutilated.

http://vanishingnewyork.blogspot.com/2017/02/waldorf-astoria.html