Unfortunately Megamiles beat me as the youngest contributor to the boards! I am a '96 grad of Cornell double majored in chemistry and Asian Studies (a curious combination, I know). I am now a business system analyst in a database marketing company after being an analyst at a managed health care company (another curious career path). While my current job does entail some traveling, I have not been with the firm long enough to take business trips and start racking up those ff miles and full fare tickets. :-(

I live in Cambridge, MA, USA b/w Harvard and MIT. I travels almost exclusively to LAX (girlfriend) and Taipei (family) on United Airlines. However, just came back from a good trip to Maui which should put me over the 50k mark required for UA's Premier Executive. (Yeah!) Like many that have commented before, I have not received ONE upgrade certificate yet!

Like Megamiles, I always buy the cheapest advance fares since the money comes out of my pocket. Because I am young and thus no $$ and will not likely fly as often next year, I guess I will appoint myself the spokesperson for keep the qualification threshold for elite level at the current level...

Ken