This is partially why I decided not to go the PhD-> try to become a professor route. It really is an incestuous community these days. I also noticed that a very

This is partially why I decided not to go the PhD-> try to become a professor route. It really is an incestuous community these days. I also noticed that a very large portion of the people at the “top” of the pipeline into academia have connections to academia in the US (eg a parent professor) who can help them get or navigate getting a lot of these early “prestige” markers. If you don’t have that, even if you’re just as smart, you’ll have a hard time breaking in. For example a lot of those kids will start doing “research” in HS, obviously in 99% of cases very closely directed by their mentor, who may be a parent. This gets them those fancy “17 year creates clean drinking water for $0.002/L” news coverage and possibly helps them win a nationally recognized science fair. Then they can also get tutored for Olympiads - unless you have a Von Neumann level intelligence you basically need a lot of special studying to be able to get far in those. Then they get into accelerated programs with local universities with the help of their parents, obviously get into whatever college they want, get the best research opportunities starting freshman year, and it continues to snowball from there. Not saying this system doesn’t make great scientists, or that the people who benefit from it aren’t smart or qualified. Just, ultimately there are only so many professorships to go around, so good luck becoming a professor in STEM at an acclaimed R1 university without this kind of pipelining, even if you’re just as smart.