And Zuckerberg? Jobs? Ellison? Dell? If you think that elite schools wouldn't want one of the world's wealthiest and most powerful entrepreneurs on their list o

And Zuckerberg? Jobs? Ellison? Dell? If you think that elite schools wouldn't want one of the world's wealthiest and most powerful entrepreneurs on their list of alumni instead of another lawyer or investment banker even if they knew they were not a "great fit," you put more stock in the principles of admissions committees than I. The reality is pretty simple. The Harvard's and Stanford's of the world put out an enormous number of hugely successful graduates because of selectivity bias. If you pool a group of 10,000 eager 18 year-olds with high standardized test scores from top high schools and mostly from privileged and wealthy families and compare that to a pool of 10,000 18 year-olds with average test scores and from average backgrounds, and pick one at random, which is more likely to be successful in their career? The point being that if Harvard could pick their classes with the benefit of hindsight, my opinion is that that they would take a lot of students that they would otherwise turn down in place of a lot of others that they would otherwise accept.