This paper estimates the effect of elite college admission on students' chances of attaining top positions in the economy, and explores the importance of peer ties as an underlying mechanism. I combine administrative data on income and the census of directors and top managers at publicly traded firms with a regression discontinuity design based on admissions rules at elite business-focused degree programs in Chile. Admission to elite programs raises the number of firm leadership positions students hold by 50% and the share with incomes in the top 0.1% of the distribution by 45%. Effects are larger for students from high-tuition private high school backgrounds and near zero for students from other backgrounds. Consistent with the hypothesis that peer ties play an important role in driving the observed effects, private high school students admitted to top universities become more likely to work in leadership roles with peers from similar backgrounds, but no more likely to work with non-peers from the same program in different cohorts or different programs in the same field.
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