@jdewey, that Gladwell talk was fascinating, thanks so much for posting. It really helped crystallize some things I was thinking about for my daughter and her choices of boarding schools.
One thing that he doesn’t touch on, though, is the relative value (or not) of attending an elite institution if you’re going to be middle of the pack anyway. I totally buy his notion that it’s better to be first in your class from Podunk School than to be middle to bottom of your class at Prestigious School (and interestingly that’s already the hiring model that my company often uses). But of course this assumes that the kid who would be middle of the pack at Prestigious would be at or near the top at Podunk, which may or may not end up being the case. There are also plenty of kids who gravitate to the middle, no matter where they go, for many reasons. I would argue that in that case, you’re better off being at Prestigious than at Podunk, at least for colleges. I’m not sure this matters as much for BS in the long run. Your college education stays on your resume pretty much forever, but it starts to look stupid to make much of even the most prestigious BS on your resume once you’re past your early 20s.
I can definitely say that the name of the prestigious college on my resume has opened many doors for me over the years even though the grades I got there were only just decent. I had a lot of fun in college and was probably going to just scrape by on grades no matter where I went, so I’m clearly a lot better off in the long run having Prestigious on the resume than Podunk.