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I'll give you an example. MIT was founded in 1861. OK. Sorta bad timing. (Two days after it was chartered, the Civil War broke out.)

But even after it got going and moved to its Cambridge campus in 1916 (significantly funded by George Eastman--as in Eastman Kodak), it didn't really become known as a premier institution until WWII.

Stanford isn't 200 years old, neither is Berkeley. Many UC campuses are a lot younger, UCSC was founded in 1965.

Even in the East a lot of universities aren't that old. A lot of well known institutions postdate the Civil War and those aren't 200 years old yet.

years alone mean nothing too.

See example: https://www.centre.edu/bicentennial/