[gbronner]

At least when I went to one, I generally had no idea who had generational wealth (there were a few with famous names), and there weren't obvious ways to show it off; the University had so much money itself that everything was free or nearly so for the students. If you were a billionaire on campus, you still got the same crappy dorm room and wore the same uniform of jeans and t shirts etc. Bragging about how rich your parents are to a bunch of ivy league students isn't going to make you friends.

I did get a sense of who was extremely motivated and smart, and, by and large, those people have been the most successful, not the ones who came from money. The ones who came from money were more likely to take 'interesting' vs lucrative jobs, but most of the advantages of networking are knowing other highly motivated people who are at the top of other fields, but knowing rich people.

Apart from that, classes at top schools go faster and teach you more, and if you want to, you can take more of them for free. So many students get 5-7 years of mid-tier college content in 4 years, which tends to produce a better trajectory for lifetime earnings.