self-educate. The rest is a mental cluster-__ck.
I agree - but unfortunately, self-education doesn't give you a piece of paper with an expensive name on it that acts as a passport into an elite law firm or whatnot.
If self-education (i.e. the absolute extreme that we could get in meritocracy) were enough, we wouldn't even need colleges, except for some of the "hands on" things that most people couldn't afford (like scientific instrumentation, etc.)
I must admit - I am biased towards autodidacty myself. I've learned enough about a number of fields (most completely unrelated to my profession) to be able to talk competently with people who are experts in these fields. This was due to my having a broad range of interests, as well as the ability to teach myself AND seek out access to the tools and information that provided the needed knowledge.
My main issue with the whole "Harvard thing" is that the selecting that goes on generally is not based on merit. Therefore, the "elite" that is perpetuated in our country is increasingly non-meritorious. We can see this, if nothing else, by looking at many of the people who run our legal, political, business, etc. sectors. Many of them, frankly, are putzes. That's not healthy for the country, in the long term. Merely shrugging and saying "well, that's just the way it is," as some on this thread are doing, is merely going to cause us to fall more deeply down that hole.