Prestige can and does open doors, but the best of the best don’t really care
A Protest at Harvard Square
Protests in Harvard Square for the “Global Day of Action for Gaza” protest on 4/26/25. Image credit: The Harvard Crimson

Elite colleges are under scrutiny now more than ever, from everyone. The political right sees them as “brainwashing institutions” of the highest order and the left has condemned them for being temples of privilege. And when it comes to geopolitical tensions, specifically in regards to Israel and Palestine, their campuses have become ground zero for much of the cultural warfare that is so prevalent in American politics. But beneath these cultural battles lies simpler truths: elite colleges are elitist, ignorant, and most of the discourse about them is childish.

The Political Circus

Previously, we saw protests at colleges where hundreds of faculty and students were arrested, leading to police brutality and destruction. Criticism comes from both ends. Pro-Palestine advocates accuse these institutions of yielding to the interests of the State of Israel and pro-Israel advocates believe that they are hosting antisemitism.

While these protests took place in nearly every state in the country, the biggest names remain the epicenters. Everything bubbled over after the infamous Congressional hearing in 2023 from former Harvard President Claudine Gay, former UPenn President Liz Magill, and current MIT President Sally Kornbluth. When Representative Elise Stefanik asked if calls for the genocide of Jews would violate the university codes of conduct, they were unable to denounce antisemitism. This testimony was so disastrous that it resulted in Gay and Magill resigning amidst both public outrage and outrage from within their universities.[1] On the other hand, Sally Kornbluth of MIT has stayed out of the fire by appeasing the Trump administration. Was it probably the reasonable thing to do? Perhaps. The prospect of international students being able to attend our universities is quite important for the future and I don’t entirely blame them for giving in to safeguard that.

Were Stefanik’s questions designed in bad faith because of their exaggeratory nature? Almost certainly. But I don’t see why these academic leaders were unable to articulate a rational stance. As a supporter of Palestinian rights myself, I even believe that the left has done an absolutely horrendous job with their advocacy.

Nowadays, the biggest ongoing fight is at Harvard. Yes, funding and departments around the country are at risk. Even Terry Tao and the Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics (IPAM) at UCLA are under serious fire.[2] And Harvard is no exception; President Trump has specifically targeted the pro-Palestine activists for their “anti-Semitism” by not only cutting their funds in the millions but also by capping the amount of international students able to enroll. What’s even more troubling is the idea that a $500 million dollar agreement between Harvard and the Trump administration was up in the air. Unlike Columbia, who bent the knee entirely by paying $200 million to the Trump administration to restore their funding, Harvard President Garber still intends to thankfully settle the matter in court.[3]

And this absolute clownshow is happening while ICE has run rampant around the country and at campuses.[4] The point here is part of a larger one. America’s universities are under fire. And while the cultural and political issues are complex, there are a ton of underlying problems that extend beyond that which are far more simple. Before I discuss those, I want to preface that I have a lot of respect for what these universities have contributed to our country. Economically, culturally, and nearly every field of STEM is influenced massively by these schools and we owe a lot to them. I still encourage everyone to go to college. But this tradeoff that we will unfortunately have to accept for the foreseeable future is becoming overwhelming.

The takeaway here is that many of the people leading these universities have jeopardized the future of the country through their incompetency to deal with political tension.

Money and Elitism

Elite private institutions around the country have accrued billions of dollars in endowment. The five schools with the largest endowments—Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Princeton, and MIT—have nearly $200 billion. Most of the largest donations are subject to conditions; in other words, colleges are forced to spend the money in certain ways. There is perhaps nothing more representative of how ignorant higher education has become than this.

To understand the problem, we need to acknowledge that elite universities are disproportionately represented in many of the most powerful positions in the country politically. The Supreme Court, for instance, has been overwhelmingly Ivy league. Justices Gorsuch, Jackson, and Kagan are from Harvard law school. Justices Alito, Kavanaugh, Sotomayor, and Thomas are from Yale law school. The trend continues, albeit not as dramatically, into positions in other branches of government, where Harvard specifically is overrepresented.

A normal human being would probably wonder: Isn’t it strange that a series of universities that comprises such a small fraction of all students in the country takes up such a significant portion of some of the most powerful positions in the most powerful country on Earth? Well, the reality is that prestige is pretty high up on the totem pole.

And that’s the thing, getting accepted to an elite school gets you on the same pipeline as many of the most powerful people on the planet. Outside of politics, it might mean working with people who end up at the likes of Stanford medicine or Google. And that’s reality, right? You see that prospect and then spend the next six years of your life trying to get into an elite college. You want that on your diploma and résumé. Everyone just seems to put so much time and effort into catering for these schools. You throw a fit and your parents throw a fit. And that's fair because it's a meaningful goal as long as you are doing it for the opportunities.

The problem is of course, that admissions departments are broken. There are too many applicants and they don’t know who to let in, so they likely go off whims most of the time. And who are these people in admissions to judge the youth on whether or not they are “worthy” of getting accepted?

The three best STEM schools in the country—MIT, Stanford, and Caltech—have around 13,000 undergraduates. For variety, if we add on, say, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, UChicago, and Duke, we get a new total of around 50,000 undergraduates. This isn’t a complete representation because there are more “elite universities” than these, but this is a pretty fair number for the absolute most elite academic institutions in the United States. To be fair, I’ll add on another 20,000 for a total of 70,000 undergraduates. And assuming there are around 20 million undergraduates in the United States, that means these people represent the “top” 0.35% of all students in the country. And the funny thing is that a lot of Ivies are getting outpaced by the top public schools in the subjects that really matter, so the number might even be lower when it really matters.

These cream of the crop universities usually accept somewhere from 1000 to 3000 students a year, accounting for somewhere from a 3 to 8% acceptance rate. Now, we all know that universities are under the guise that they are all about meritocracy when this is far from true. Not only are there tens of thousands of seniors in high school “qualified” for these cream of the crop schools who get rejected, but the trend is green; money is the most common correlation to acceptance. Here are the data on the types of students who attend some of the Ivy Plus schools, with others just for your interest.[5][6]

Family Income By School

In other words, the working rich and higher are extremely overrepresented in elite universities. These numbers are extremely alarming. Keep in mind that somewhere around 45% of high schoolers do not even get the opportunity to attend a four-year college.[7]

Family Income By School

It would be really awesome if these schools collectively would let in a few thousand more kids. If they genuinely cared about the future of the country, they would do this. There has a plethora of childish remarks from admissions people and professors about this problem. No matter how many PR campaigns or buildings they rename in the name of equity, the problem remains that they just don't do what would make the middle class happy. And the reason they dont? Their prestige would drop and donors wouldn’t be happy. Elite universities after all, rely heavily on money from donors to operate.

Not Quite Overrated, but Maybe Overblown

Elite colleges are correlated with things like higher income and earlier promotions at work. But you have to stop for a second and realize that much of these data are based on people who are already wealthy and potentially well-connected. Yes, you can get a lot more time with professors at private schools. Yes, there are more research opportunities. Yes, there are more opportunities for internships and grants. But you have to understand that these universities primarily function as tools for the wealthy to get wealthier.

So you may be wondering how the middle class or underprivileged kids fare at these schools. The answer is that they generally do fine. A lot of elite schools have also made great strides in paying the entirety of tuition for kids who come from families that don’t make much money. But in contrast with other schools? It turns out that the likes of MIT, Caltech, Stanford, and the Ivies aren’t that great at social mobility. MIT is the best when it comes to moving students up income quintiles out of the Ivy Plus schools, but it ranks in the thousands overall. That’s actually incredibly poor. Systems like California State University (CSU), California Community Colleges (CCC), SUNY (The University of New York), and CUNY (The City University of New York) are actually among the best at helping underprivileged kids make money.

If you had a genuinely great time at a school like Stanford or Yale, it’s your right to donate. But don’t do it under the guise that you really care about the overall education of the country. If you did, you would be better off donating to schools like UC Irvine, Stony Brook University, CSU Long Beach, or Rutgers. Or scholarship foundations! And hey, most of you donors are wealthy enough to donate to a few schools anyways. You can donate to your prestigious alma mater and also donate to public schools and scholarship foundations.

For me, one of the most important metrics in assessing a college is to think about what percentage of the class is doing truly meaningful work. At Caltech or MIT, this number is probably very high. You don’t have to walk very far to find accomplished and passionate students who care. At a school like UCSB or University of Wisconsin–Madison, you will have to try a little bit harder. But you can certainly still find like-minded students in, say, a random building in your engineering quad! And surprisingly, this metric has a correlation with “rank” albeit not an incredibly strong one. Schools like Harvard and Stanford are prestigious, but have a lot of students who have accomplished basically nothing. Meanwhile, a school like Purdue isn’t considered Ivy Plus but probably has quite a few talented engineers. In fact, schools like Georgia Tech and Purdue output more students to the likes of SpaceX than basically every Ivy. Do we really care about all of the rich kids pursuing finance or liberal arts at Harvard? There are a ton of things that go into a school's ranking that probably don't matter to you, which is why you shouldn't put much thought into them.

These elite universities want you to think that they are meritocracies. They want you to believe that they champion the working class. However, the reality is that they operate more like corporations than institutions of learning. The administrations at these schools are actively fighting battles that they have dug themselves into, whether that's political or in regards to admissions. And while the attack on them from the Trump administration is problematic, it should be a big warning that they are not as untouchable as they think they are. Many of these people really don't live in the real world and their gold-plated covers is being hit by rocks every day. And regardless of who you are, where you want to go, or where you have been, you should be skeptical about what these colleges represent. Parents and their kids should aim for whatever will help their future the most, but they need to get out of the bubble that many of these academics live in.

I still believe in striving for these colleges because there are a lot of wonderful people at them. There are a lot of opportunities at them that you can use to help your future. There is simply a universal standard for excellence at the likes of MIT and Caltech that is very difficult to find anywhere else.

But at the end of the day, you should put in the work wherever you are. Research shows that students who were qualified for elite colleges but rejected or chose not to attend are generally doing just as well as those who did attend. A lot of the benefits of these schools come down to social prestige.[8] You will undoubtedly have to put in more work to stand out. But if you really care about changing the world, that’s a given regardless of what your alma mater is.

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