<p>Well, if you want a “super graduate” program, you’d better be a flat-out genius to begin with. Two of the people I mentioned turned down Cornell (for Berkeley and UW), so it’s definitely possible to get in there. As for the others, I don’t know of anyone personally who got into any of them (for physics anyway), although the head of MIT’s Laboratory for Nuclear Science is a Carleton grad (and MIT PhD).</p>