The further you get in a profession, the more it is about who you know and not what you know.
Take someone hard working and talented and put them in a new network of rich people or other hard work and talent. Then good things will happen.
I found out even Repl.it was rejected from Y Combinator twice until Paul Graham personally asked the president to review his application.
Y Combinator intentionally became the center of the world for the best startups by plucking talented people and putting them in such a concentrated network.
In one of his rare interviews, he agreed he’s “Doing something comparable to what the Florentines did: picking a pretty small area, making it the absolute center for talent selection, a magnet that drew people in, and having a lot of winners. As he learned at Harvard.”
Paul goes on to say
“The thing is, though, all universities have an admissions process that’s corrupt in that way.”
Y Combinator definitely has a few legacy admissions and Dean favorites but it appears it is the way it is very intentionally. The fact it has held up as a draw for talent for nearly 20 years is testament of that.