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Notes -
Is this true though? I don’t know if the eliteness of schools is extremely correlated to raw intelligence or aptitude. Sure students from ivy leagues succeed but that could be due to networking opportunities and status signaling.
Well, eliteness is clearly extremely correlated to raw intelligence and aptitude, that just doesn't mean that those are sufficient factors alone to explain the eliteness.
If this was the major factor, though, that would in itself make "become elite over time" come to pass. If suddenly all the smart graduates are coming out of Podunk U, eventually the people who make hiring decisions will figure out to headhunt smart candidates there or to put branch offices in the Podunk Corridor.
This, on the other hand, might make things a bit more sticky. Suppose "eliteness" is a nonlinear effect, a consequence of the things you see accomplished in places where you get all the smartest people and all the richest people and all the most well-connected people to mingle. Intelligence benefits from network effects with more intelligence, but to a lesser extent than money and pull. Lose all the smartest people to Podunk, but don't lose the venture capital and the clout along with them, and it's not clear that the smartest are going to be harmed the least by the separation, at least not for a few generations.
Similar effects concern me when I'm tempted to join in on the schadenfreude upthread about potentially getting rid of "legacy" admissions. "He needs help with his homework" might be annoying, but combine it with "I need help with my job-hunt/startup/etc" and it looks like a win/win. Like the old saying goes: It's not what you know, it's not who you know, it's who knows what you know.
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