The Ivy League is an anthletic conferrence, similiar to the Big Ten. The Ivy League schools excel at producing financial and business professionals, who then, as the other commentor states, are funneled to the most lucrative careers.

They are the most lucrative careers because of the way our financial system is the progenitor and final repository of money and value in our economy up until very recently, up till the age of Big Data and Big Computation. However, what's just as fungible as money? Data. A "New Ivy League" is emerging. One that does not produce business and financial professionals, but instead produces IT professionals. This new group of school similarly funnels their grads to the most lucrative careers in this new medium of wealth creation.

Ivy League: Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, and Yale University.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_League

Stanford is not a member of the Ivy League, although it is a peer institution. I believe the OP's point was that the highest performing students will go wherever the most money can be made, and that elite institutions eventually steer their graduates into the most lucrative path. Right now that is financial services.

The Ivy league is exclusively an east coast thing.

Technically, the Ivy League refers to an athletic conference. All of its 8 member institutions on the East Coast. Stanford is in the PAC-12 conference if I recall correctly.

Yes, it is just as prestigious.