Speaking as someone who had a 5.0 at MIT and now works at Google - although reasonable, I disagree with the comment that the top people at the top schools are better than the top people at other schools. For 2 main reasons:
- There is no absolute ordering of people. I’m not saying it’s hard to figure it out - I’m saying there actually isn’t one.
- And even if there was one :-), you certainly wouldn’t be able to predict it based on high school performance.
Obviously lots of great entrepreneurs went to non-elites. Off the top of my head / IIRC, Larry Page went to Michigan, Steve Jobs went to Reed, the founder of Under Armor (and Sergey Brin?) went to UMD, etc. Even Illinois Tech on their tour was talking about some graduate who did something impressive (forgot what) and made hundreds of millions of dollars.
Assuming there’s an implied question in this thread title - where should your kids go to school? - I think you want to find somewhere where they’ll thrive. I think it’s better for them to go to a school where they’ll do really well, vs. a better / elite school where they might be average.
I think the elites do give you an advantage in getting the first job out of college. But if you got a great education, gained confidence, and developed a love for you field, IMO 10 years later you’re much more likely to be doing better / happier than if you struggled at a better school.