Does School Prestige Still Matter (As Much)

I had this thought myself, and since have always thought about recruiting outcomes as decently random and falling along a normal distribution. If you have the best outcome on the right and the worst outcome on the left, then the majority of the distribution will fall somewhere in the middle with some percentage on either side.

I believe that if you go to a target school, have a high GPA, network, and prep as best you can, you only shift the average outcome slightly to the right (toward a more optimal outcome). What this means is that it is MORE LIKELY that you get a better outcome, but not guaranteed by any means. 

My point is that when you see these target school kids at MMs and non-target school kids at EBs, this is not because prestige has gone out the wayside. It is because you are handpicking the extremes on either end of the normal distribution (although I would argue that landing at a MM even at a target is not the a lower outcome, not getting a job or landing in some inferior role is). These kids got unlucky or lucky respectively, in that maybe their average expected outcome was better or worse than what ended up actually happening for them in this one life they were given.

That being said, if your question is whether this is a yes/no question: Can target kids end up at MMs (or worse), and can non-target kids end up at EBs (or better)? The answer is yes. There is no hard rule that these kids are ineligible for these roles just based on the school they attend. 

My point is that it's just the luck of their one outcome relative to how they increased or decreased their average expected outcome based on networking, prep, etc