What differentiates those non-prodigies who make it to HYPS?

[Anonymous]

To the Anonymous who wrote this:
Your branded U.S. graduate program plus and the connections of your thesis advisor at the branded U.S. graduate program got you that World Bank job.

I do not work at World Bank, you are really shooting in the dark but nice try WB would never give me what I want. I do not want to sit in a windowless office. You think a great career in international development automatically equals WB? Where do you live these days? I grew up in a low-middle income country in Eastern Europe, did not carry any chip on my shoulder, just sheer grit and perseverance and never took no for an answer. Went to University of Pitt and then I changed the world (in my own way). Show me which HYPS is a normal, well-adjusted, happy human being.

[Anonymous]

Branding....IMO the brand status of a first job and where it leads affects the degree in which the career climb will be easy or tough for most people in certain industries. And more opportunity for a prestige company is available from highly ranked schools whether or not your family is connected. Recruiters face overwhelming volumes of applications. Knowing that a pre-screen has already been done whether based on school reputation or contacts is a reality to get through to the decision makers. Once at that that point there's a hope that merit will play a larger role. Can a top, driven student make it happen without that? Of course, it's just a lot harder to compete for less slots unless they are already connected through family. We have both situations within our extended family. The kid attending the higher ranked school is having an appreciably easier time obtaining internships, the other is having success but not quite to the same degree despite doing exceptionally well at a great public university.

[Anonymous]

Personally for me, right now an admission nod from Caltech and to a slightly lesser extent from MIT is a much bigger badge of honor and signals a lot more about the academic credentials and "prodigiousness" of the kid than an admit into HYPS.

Caltech and MIT both don't use restrictive admission policies and Caltech specially evaluates candidates primarily on their academic potential, rather than trying to execute on some social engineering obsession. They let the cards fall where they may (so lack of "outward" diversity be damned, with the class being 40%+ Asian), because if the kid is not well prepared for an elite school, they will get their head handed out to them and their self confidence will be completely shattered because of the mismatch problems. But most of the elite schools engaging in holistic admissions just don't care about how many of the students admitted for diversity reasons are forced to switch to less competitive majors because they can't cut it in the super competitive majors. They don't care that it is a disservice to the career prospects of these kids who could have had great careers in the competitive kids if they had been matched to schools based on their abilities. Right now between URM's, first gens, legacies, athletes and others, HYPS is admitting enough kids who are quite mediocre in their capabilities that just knowing that a random kid got into one of these schools signals very little about their "prodigiousness" On the other hand, if a kid gets into Caltech, you know they are razor sharp.

Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of really smart kids at HYPS. It's just that the signaling affect from these schools is going to continue to diminish as they abandon strict academic standards and use all kinds of dubious criteria couched as "holistic" admissions to admit kids. Then they make things worse through grade inflation and a watered down curriculum.