"These are all great schools for lots of different majors but most of them would not be considered “elite”
You seem to define elite as only being private colleges, the most respected here is Berkeley EECS (the only program where Stanford may loses cross-admits). Do you straight up think any degree from say Brown is more elite than Berkeley because one is an ivy and the other is not?
“I do believe ultimately the reputation of the college has a lot to do with getting that first interview and that there is some correlation to lifetime earnings (if we use that as a measure of success).”
Is there any evidence for this, most studies could not find a correlation, much less causation between college prestige and wealth, outside of URMs benefiting from the prestige boost.