Illustrated with a picture of a tour group surrounding the John Harvard statue in Harvard Yard, a debate on the NYT website asks whether where you go to college matters as much as everyone acts like it does.

Guidance counselor Martha O’Connell points out that Oprah went to Tennessee State—a pretty silly argument, as there will always be exceptions, the typical student is concerned with the typical outcome—and writes,

Researchers found that students who applied to several elite schools but didn’t attend them — either because of rejection or by their own choice — are more likely to earn high incomes later than students who actually attended elite schools.

But Anthony Carnevale responds,

Access to selective colleges increasingly determines lifetime earnings, and has become an arbiter of access to the key positions of power and influence in American society.

My sense is that, as a general matter, people who are going to be successful go to good schools, and people who aren’t, don’t….