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Scholars have paid increasing attention to the role of qualitative differences within the same education level as they are impacted by upstream factors such as parental investment and family resources, and, in turn, as they impact later outcomes such as wages. In this vein, studies have investigated whether such differences in "quality" among similar quantities of education serve as a primary mechanism through which high-SES families seek to transmit advantage dynastically. For instance, Chetty et al. (2020) claim that elite college attendance eliminates any family background effect on wages—though it remains possible that this is not a treatment effect of college per se but rather results from a dynamic whereby the ability selection gradient for highly selective colleges is steeper for lower-SES students. In this research tradition, however, few studies have examined the role of genetic inheritance of ability; here we argue that the recent addition of genetic data to social science surveys provides an important empirical tool through which one can examine how ability inherited through biological mechanisms is correlated with social origins, on the one hand, and contributes to the creation of horizontal educational stratification, on the other. Additionally, we examine the role of differences in higher education school quality as a mediator of genetic effects on labor market outcomes. Results from analysis of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health show the following: First, the genetic potential for educational attainment is positively associated with the academic selectivity of colleges respondents attend and hourly wage in middle age (overall and net of college selectivity). Second, we find that lower SES students do not evince a higher correlation between ability and college prestige, thus casting doubt on the notion that the leveling effect of elite college attendance is due to differential ability selection by family background. Third, we found some evidence for an interaction between parents' SES and the genetic measures associated with hourly wage net of college selectivity.