A classic example I use is I attended Arizona State for a bachelors and masters in electrical engineering. A friend of mine attended Arizona State for bachelors and Stanford for a masters. We both learned the same material. He had more opportunities to meet good contacts and use those resources to expand his future. Did he? no, he ended up at a defense contractor back in AZ. Instead he had larger student loans to pay back. The big fancy schools have big fancy networks of people, but if you're not going to leverage it, its not worth it. Sounds like YC is very similar.
5 years out he's doing defense work in AZ... but 20 years out he's flexing that Master's to get CTO roles, and making connections at the local Cornell / Stanford / MIT club, etc. etc.
P.S this is not a recent market phenomenon