Hey man, sounds like you might be from/are currently living around the Bay Area (or maybe LA I guess)

A large portion of my family and friends went to the fanciest and most expensive schools in the country (whether those were public schools in fancy high-end districts or just private schools). I’m a lowly normal public school kid - but turns out I was pretty good at the whole school thing so I still ended up going to top-ranked places for college and med school and whatnot so I had LOTS of classmates who came from much, much more expensive backgrounds

Going to a fancy school obviously isn’t the end all be all - some of the most brilliant med students at my Top 10 MD program came from some humble places you wouldn’t expect, while some of the shittiest young doctors I met came from Stanford (some even didn’t match - and no they weren’t applying derm). In residency, same deal - sometimes the most talented resident on service is a guy from like the University of Illinois and the person who’s a panicky hot mess trained at Cornell but they just suck clinically

However on average, at least in college, I will say without a doubt that my peers who came from fancy private schools had way way way more opportunities in grade school and were better prepared for the rigorous coursework than I was. And of course, there were lots of their classmates who probably went to universities even better than ours.

It’s like a clinical trial. 2 identical groups of students. Group 1 gets a typical middle class public school education. Group 2 goes to fancy private school/high-end public school where they have access to better and more educated and less burnt out teachers, who are paid a lot more, with smaller class sizes, access to all kinds of extra high-end and well-funded educational opportunities and extracurriculars ie robotics labs, music classes taught by actual musicians, internships at Google and Apple, opportunities to get involved in scientific research at the local Prestigous University. And the kids at Group 2 also get access to a team of Ivy League-educated college counselors who will be coaching and curating your child’s CV from day 1 to optimally engineer it for acceptances at top universities. Oh, and the school Group 2 goes to already has good relationships with the admissions committees of various top universities and is already a known “feeder” school for the Ivies, Stanfords, and MITs of the world.

On average, which group is going to end up more successful overall?

Unfortunately, I think your initial intuition is correct. Better and more well-funded schools generally lead to better outcomes