True Currency of Education Institutes

why are students attracted to IITs, Stanford, HBS, MIT & similar prestigious institutes?

i have asked this question to myself & a lot of folks in my network. answers always vary. for many, it’s a prestigious foot in the door to become rich, for some, it’s the gateway to realise their potential of excellence while for few, it’s to gain the ability to deliver societal impact.

our reasons are very personal in nature & have an evolving state since we are constantly learning about how external world functions while also identifying & aligning our internal needs, wants, desires & expectations.

but, if i were to hypothesise a generalised reason for student’s attraction towards prestigious institutes, would it make more sense to base the hypothesis on outcome/output (especially long-term) rather than inputs like academic rigor, faculty expertise, industry collaborations, campus life & such or short-term outputs like placement records? could below be a good hypothesis?

a student is attracted to a prestigious institute because of its alumni’s evident success in his/her preferred or related domains.

if i were to extrapolate the above hypothesis to a lot of students, a derivative hypothesis would be:

students’ attraction to a prestigious institute is directly proportional to the number of domains where its alumni have shown evident success.

could we further reason that the currency of an educational institute is its alumni’s evident success in other prestigious or/and trending domains?

i am not sure whether a generalised reason like my above hypothesis or reason could justify the complexity of a simple query like students’ attractiveness towards prestigious institutes. however, it definitely helps me understand more about the decision-making process of students when they are choosing a prestigious institute over the others.

on the same note, i want to congratulate Aditya Srivastava on adding a new evident success to IIT Kanpur in the public domain with AIR 1 in UPSC. it's moments like these that elevate the prestige of an educational institute.

it’s also one of those moments when i feel extremely proud of my alma-mater. IITK ka tempo high toh pehle se hi tha. ab todha aur high ho gaya hai. although not necessary but it would be fascinating to see the increase in attraction to IIT Kanpur because of Aditya’s incredible achievement.