On people who make it into Oxford, Cambridge, etc, top universities.

Sure, us average guys (and girls and whatever other genders…) do pretty well if we find work, show up early and are a pleasant presence on the job…A smile and a good word goes a long way toward putting the coworkers and bosses at ease. Funny, I got a decent gig to earn some gasoline and weed money 20 years ago and it turns out I’ve stuck around because I suddenly found a wife, stumbled into a mortgage, wound up with a couple kids running around…All of a sudden this decent gig turns into the retirement scheme, the pension$, the TDA, the various bennies…the life. Just be your best at work, fancy colleges hardly mean shit.

I’ve amassed more wealth and benefits than I would have thought possible 25 years ago, I figured it was jail or poverty for me back back then but I saw an opening and I jumped into it.

I’m a community college and night course sort of guy btw, I paid for these degrees and my New York State license by mowing grass, painting sheds and shoveling snow.

Forget those fancy-boy schools, just find a good gig and work your ass off and be nice to the coworkers.

You can be a big operator at work, just handle yourself well and be kind $$$

Well as I doubt there are any Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard etc graduates here how the hell would we know ?

I don’t know about undergraduate admissions but I went to Stanford for graduate school. I remember you had to do real well on the GRE and have high grades from your undergraduate work from a university of sufficient standing. What helps a lots (at least for sciences and engineering) was to have prior research lab experience and already be published.

George W Bush graduated from Harvard. Does anybody really think he was a genius? Money gets you into those schools.

Your average Joe without rich parents may have a genius IQ but he goes to a public college.

I don't think many people with "basic IQ" levels are getting into elite schools. Some people are just born with really powerful brains. On the flip side, a lot of those same people are deficient in people skills, so if they get into Harvard, graduate from Harvard, they'll get a good job right away, but they won't last long. Unless they're in STEM and are going to be in a laboratory with other people that are the same...

Thom Yorke of Radiohead band for one went to Oxford.

In the US at least, some elite schools will let in rich kids who aren't all that smart, if their parents make sufficiently large donations, or they have or had "legacy admissions". That is, if your parent went to that university then you could also go, which led to generation after generation of wealthy families graduating from Ivy League schools even if they weren't that smart.

Getting into Harvard might mean you're smart and hard-working, or it might mean you're rich and well-connected. Getting into MIT or Cal Tech just means you're smart!