I have not been on a hiring committee — I actually failed my comprehensive exams partway through grad school which is how I ended up in tech :) — but your hypot

I have not been on a hiring committee — I actually failed my comprehensive exams partway through grad school which is how I ended up in tech :) — but your hypothesis sounds very reasonable to me. I’m just saying that we need a more careful causal identification strategy than that provided herein to say whether prestige has a meaningful effect on hiring, on average.