You’re hiding your metrics. What do you consider “elite” or “top,” on a percentile basis?
I went to UT in the 90s and I believe I was the highest ranking student in my very large high school class to do so. I was somewhere between top 3-5%. The kids ahead of me went to places like Rice, Duke, Harvard, Yale, Northwestern, etc. Most of my high school friends who ended up at Texas were well below that range.
UT had some ridiculous sliding scale for admissions back then, too. I remember that based on my SAT score (which was good, but not Ivy League good), I could get in with something like a C average.
Here’s another data point: in the 1990s, UT had generous merit scholarship programs. For example, National Merit Finalists received full tuition scholarships. This was done to attract top students who otherwise would go elsewhere. Elite schools do not offer NM scholarships, because they don’t have to.
Don’t fall into the same trap as suburban nitwits do, convincing themselves they’re on the same team as billionaires because they leased the top of the line F150 and bought a bass boat on a 30-year note. UT provided a great education and attracted some very good students, for a variety of reasons. But it was not remotely “elite” in the 1990s and in many ways still isn’t.