Any parents who bribed and cheated to get their kids into elite universities would be buying into a pervasive misconception. It's easy to assume that because students from elite schools make more money (they do), that going to those schools is what causes them to make more money. This is wrong.
How do we know? When researchers have investigated the value of going to a top high school or college, they've found the long-term financial benefits are, as one paper says, "comparable to zero." That is, students with the same abilities and ambitions will do equally well whether they go to an elite college or not.