[buchanaf]

Yes, people like George W. Bush, who are in the top .00000001% of privilege, don't need to do well before college, in college, after college, or even as a state or country's highest elected official.

However, for most of the mere mortals at Yale and Harvard, they still have to compete with the every other college graduate, and some of those other college graduates are pretty smart themselves.

[csa]

The context of the discussion was a highly connected person who will inherit their dad's investment bank -- the "elite and priveleged" mentioned in 'ryandrake's initial reply. W falls into this category, and I wouldn't say that privilege of that kind is quite as rare at elite schools as you make it out to be (~5-10% of the student body?). W might be an extreme example, ditto with "inherit an investment bank", but privilege is not hard to find at elite schools.

[ryandrake]

Exactly. I'm not saying "people at Harvard don't have to try". I'm saying "elite and privileged people whose success is already pre-ordained don't have to try to be successful (but some do anyway)". Even in my "top but not quite Ivy League" grad school, there were a handful of folks who I'd describe as sufficiently elite and privileged, such that they, for instance, really didn't need to stress out about the interviewing and the internships like the rest of us had to.