> Bruni points out, for instance, that among the American-born chief executives of the top 100 companies in the Fortune 500, just about 30 went to an Ivy League school or equally selective college<p>Wait, so 30% went to an Ivy or equivalent, even though those schools probably only graduate 1% of bachelors degrees? That's a hugely significant difference
It depends on a lot of factors, but mostly what you take with you out of college and into the real world. Elite colleges place virtual restrictions in order to create some community that they consider 'elite', and its strength in elitism is also its major drawback, being they are not representative of the world.<p>edit:
Even if we take cold simple numbers of "1 in 10" acceptance rate, we can see it is not all that it is cut out to be. One student in the elite college is not "worth" replacing the other "9". Just attribution to an elite college simply does not mean given 9 of the others, that they can somehow be 'replaced' by that one who met a minute ephemeral elitist criterion. Nor does it mean they work harder, or that they are more appropriate for any given situation or requirement, or that they would benefit any organization significantly by the same factor or anywhere near it given the other 9.<p>Elite colleges are more like brand names than anything else and they need that image of low/high quality and superior distance in ability to sell their highly priced packages. The substance may not even actually be there, other than as a perception and preconceived notion.<p>tld;r I agree that the attribution of the significance of acceptance into elite colleges is way overblown. Most of it is without substance, but maybe just driven by social status for inclusion into the top 1% of America's elite that rule the US.