I attended Stanford business school on scholarship. I was brought up in a middle class household, not poor. I couldn't fit in with the rich kids, many of whom were sons/daughters of millionaire/billionaires, the bankers and the consultants. All the students were obsessed with networking and as a "lowly" engineer pursuing an MBA, my classmates never considered me worth getting to know. I tried but couldn't really forge any meaningful friendships.I felt like an outsider all the time. This was in sharp contrast to my experience in engineering school in India, where the only thing that mattered was how smart you are, irrespective of who your parents are.