Yes and no. Ability to enter a selective school sorts people based on a specific collection of attributes. Those certainly include intelligence and execution ab

Yes and no. Ability to enter a selective school sorts people based on a specific collection of attributes. Those certainly include intelligence and execution ability. But they also include the ability to slavishly follow rules and optimize ones' life to a specific college acceptance formula between the ages of 14-18. (Being at least reasonably wealthy and having educated parents helps too!) The cost is that this approach filters out a lot of extremely brilliant, creative people who don't want to "slavishly follow the formula", or just have normal teenage problems with authority.