all of those schools are the same, harvard's got two things going--name recognition and jack meyer's work. a 19-year old working at some cellphone-kiosk in utah recognizes versace-does that mean much? williams and amherst are better schools if you're talking about the word in the "a place bright kids go learn things" and that kid hasn't heard of them, but everyone at a top-25 school sure has.

jack meyer was the dude who just left managing the endowment to go out on his own when people freaked to learn some people under him were making like 8 million a year. mistake to fire anyone managing 27-billion dollars at an annual return of over 15%. that's sick. that guy singlehandedly dropped over ten billion dollars of free money for the school in the decade he managed the endowment. that pretty much means if the school realizes it's slipping in any area, they can go out and buy the faculty they want and build a fancy building for the department. it's kinda like watching the yankees in free-agency.

if you're acclimated to being around smart people, you figure out there are fifteenish places that produce the same talent and none of them stand out.

the clearasil-kid at the mall's seen good will hunting or whatever and will be impressed to the point he'd assume everyone who went there grasps quantum-mechanics and spent their college years in a blazer with elbow patches in libraries instead of throwing things out of windows at people walking to church on sunday morning because there was still too much cocaine left to consider anything else a good idea.

so dumb people know us and we can buy rockstars of academia and give them toys to play with and get them sweeter deals on whatever they publish. the playing field evens out in the real world.