That said, I think the thesis is a bit overstated. The reason many more Harvard CS students talk about Google > Stripe is not because Stripe is not prestigious (it obviously is, and plenty of super talented students go there). It's because Google hires a ton of Harvard CS grads, whereas many late-stage startups do not hire as many new grads, nor do they have as large of hiring pools. They're going to have an obviously larger impact on the sorts of jobs people discuss.
The same thing with GS, Jane Street, or Citadel, because they actively recruit at Harvard through on-campus recruiting and hire a comparatively large portion of Harvard graduates.
This is related to the other reason that companies like Google are talked about much more than mid-stage startups: the school on your diploma has much larger impact at these big, more calcified companies than it does on startups where individual hires could help make-or-break the company. And places like McKinsey or Bain basically hire many students so they can tell clients they have a team of Harvard grads working on the problem.
> they assume their intelligence insulates them from peer pressure.
If you come into Harvard with this notion, I can't really see how you stay with it after your first recruiting/punch season. And, honestly, Harvard undergrads aren't that smart.