It’s even more elitist than that. We live in a big city. The colleges recruit at the ultra expensive private schools. There are public high schools with larger student bodies and plenty of high SAT/high GPA students that are ignored. In one instance, D did get a postcard from an east coast school inviting her (likely they saw her very high SAT) to the program at the expensive private.
The colleges can recruit whomever they want. It’s up to employers to recognize the flaws in this type of college recruitment and discount the expensive fancy name colleges. The students who go to those expensive colleges are not ‘better’, for the most part, they are just from wealthier families.