How much path dependence can getting into the right kindergarten have? It used to be that obsessed parents used to sign kids up for Olympic-level athletics that require starting young (gymnastics)[1], piano and violin. These were all pretty marginal ways of helping their kids into college, but the redeeming quality of this kind of gamble was the path-dependence: it was the only way of improving the kid's odds that far out of the high school.

But elite kindergartens? Unless early education improves your IQ permanently (of which I'm not entirely sure) [2], this is stupid. Is the path dependence there?

It's probably a better idea to make sure your kid eats right, gets DHA and creatine, works at a few skills for the ten-odd years it takes to achieve mastery, and leave him/her alone for the most part, because there's nothing else you can do. [3]

[1] Gymnastics, piano and violin are all myelin related, and myelin takes years to configure. Swimming, on the other hand, is much less path-dependent; you can get your muscles, blood and lungs up to spec in a few years.

[2] School improves IQ, but those improvements vanish in the late teens.

[3] Unless you went ahead and got him a Nobel prize sperm donor for a dad. That will give him around 12 IQ points.