I meant “Harvard” as a metonym for desirable/high-status universities. Like it or not, when an employer has to sift through 100 applications for a single vacancy, a Harvard graduate is far more likely to still be in the running by the time they’ve narrowed it down to five.
This matters less the longer you’ve been out of college, but by then, the effect will have made its mark on your resume already anyway.
What do you consider high status? Top 10? Top 20? A poor kid coming out of University fo Wisconsin (ranked ~50) is not going to look as good as a Harvard grad, but so what? That's my point, only a few thousand kids are ever going to get to be from Harvard. That kid from Wisconsin is going to do great, and have plenty of opportunity. It does a huge disservice to imply that he is lesser or lost out because he didn't make it to Harvard. Same for the kid who goes to the local community college. He will obviously have less opportunity than if he went to opportunity, but that doesn't mean he won't have a lot of opportunity, and enough to live a good life.
Okay, sure. Let's include University of Wisconsin and not include the local community college. University of Wisconsin received north of 42,000 applications for the freshman class of 2019,[0] almost exactly the same number that Harvard did.[1] Even a prestigious-but-small liberal arts college like Reed will have an order of magnitude fewer applications; the local community college, another order of magnitude fewer still.
What I am saying is that we try to protect children from the profound unfairness of the real world, but by the time they're getting ready to go to college, they are competing with each other on a national scale for scarce resources (i.e., a 5% shot at a seat at Harvard, or a 15% shot at a seat at UW if you prefer). I'm not fixating on Harvard specifically, but it is symbolic of this competition for scarce resources and the compounding effects of early advantages and opportunity.
This matters less the longer you’ve been out of college, but by then, the effect will have made its mark on your resume already anyway.