What big discoveries can be attributed to Elite schools?
russell: If you broaden it a bit to include other elite schools like MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, Caltech, etc. the impact is enormous.  Their innovations won WWII.  Their students and alumni founded HP, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, MySpace, Intel, and on and on.  These schools tend to have alumni networks all over the place.  There are Harvard Clubs coast to coast.Take a look at Nobel Prizes; these schools dominate.  Take a look at the diploma on your doctor's or lawyer's wall."Do they just attract smart people, and smart people tend to have good ideas and execute them well?"  Not necessarily that they think better or execute better than everyone else.  It's just that in the aggregate there are so many of them that there are bound to be ones around anything significant.As a counterpoint, I live near Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo.  It's not a top tier school, but it's surprising the number of successful startups that have come out of it.  Jamba Juice come to mind.