Please read my posts #14 and #15.
Agree 100%.
The most highly motivated and intelligent students get into these schools, then we say their attending the schools created their success. Just as we say attending Harvard makes a person successful.
What needs to be done to determine the actual facts would be to randomly split an entering class into these schools (or Harvard) and remove half of them. Then see how much effect school attendance has on their later lives.
Can’t do it, of course, for legal, practical and ethical reasons. But would be quite interesting.
What I suspect is that Harvard takes a large crop of people who would have been very successful in life no matter what, and then takes credit for that success.
Personally, I was never able to attend college, mostly for family reasons. Started in work quite literally in what is generally considered one of the dread dead-end jobs, janitorial.
Worked my way up and out, and am now widely recognized as a national leader in my field. Have been accepted as an expert witness in state and federal courts. People universally assume a college degree and probably graduate degree although I’ve never tried to hide my lack of formal education. When people I work with find out, they are surprised but don’t care, since by then I’ve already demonstrated my competence by the work I do.
Had I gotten the chance to go to Harvard, people would say my success was because I went there.