A lot of the culture of elite school strivers can be explained by the fact that while your elite Ivy and similar grads certainly know that not every single one of their classmates was a supergenius, they truly believe that such people are superior to everybody else. And not just about "intelligence" or whatever we want to call it, but about all facets of human greatness except maybe personal charisma .
"Harvard" grads might not be perfectly brilliant, wise, and moral, but they're certainly superior to everyone else in the country. And if my Harvard classmates were not uniformly geniuses and morally upright citizens, imagine what garbage people make up the rest of society! Barely human, really.
The Ezra stuff surprised me because it wasn't simply, "Harvard grads are more likely to be better," which is at least slightly defensible, but, basically, "how can anyone who didn't go to Harvard be any good at all???? Probably he isn't!!!"
People my age remembering their damn SAT scores. What a crew.