it would be interesting to look at some populations of high achievers in fields that depend on brainpower and see what fraction of them are people who went to Ivy-tier universities. (As a fraction of those who were in the US immediately before university, say.)
That would measure some (unfortunately hard to disentangle) combination of (1) what fraction of very smart people go to those universities and (2) how much going to one of those universities helps with later success.
(But I suspect that doing this in a way that has any chance of actually telling us anything useful might be a lot of hard work. In any case, I don’t intend to try to do it.)
it would be interesting to look at some populations of high achievers in fields that depend on brainpower and see what fraction of them are people who went to Ivy-tier universities. (As a fraction of those who were in the US immediately before university, say.)
That would measure some (unfortunately hard to disentangle) combination of (1) what fraction of very smart people go to those universities and (2) how much going to one of those universities helps with later success.
(But I suspect that doing this in a way that has any chance of actually telling us anything useful might be a lot of hard work. In any case, I don’t intend to try to do it.)