[DANK_YACHT]

> It may be a smart choice, but not all smart people who try to make that choice get in.

But not all top students in mid-tier attempted to go to Harvard. So if you were basing the "smartness" of these two populations based on this single decision alone, then the low-tier students at Harvard would be smarter because 100% of them attempted to go to Harvard, which was a smarter choice than the choice made by some of the students at mid-tier universities who chose not to apply to Harvard.

> After those first two-ish years, people’s abilities correlated more with who they were and not where they went to school.

In my experience, peoples' first few years out of college has a huge effect on their career trajectories. People I know who had high salaries out of school continue to have high salaries. People who didn't get good entry-level jobs continue to struggle (relative to the rest of the pack, they're not starving).