Schools and neighborhoods account for less than 1% of life outcome variance.

From Long-Term Trends in Adult Socio-Economic Resemblance between Former Schoolmates and Neighbouring Children by Are Skeie Hermansen, Nicolai T Borgen, Arne Mastekaasa. From the Abstract:

Schools and residential neighbourhoods constitute key contexts of development beyond the family of origin. Yet, few prior studies address whether the overall impact of these childhood contexts on adult life chances has changed over time. In this article, we investigate changes in socio-economic resemblance between former schoolmates and neighbouring children using Norwegian administrative data covering three decades. We use cross-classified multilevel models to decompose the variance in children’s educational attainment and adult earnings into the contributions found within and between their school and neighbourhood contexts in adolescence. We find that unadjusted school and neighbourhood correlations in educational attainment are relatively modest and declining over time. These trends largely reflect declining socio-economic segregation between schools and neighbourhoods over time. After adjusting for sorting by family background, schools account for 2 per cent or less of the total variation in completed years of education in the more recent cohorts and neighbourhoods even less. For adult earnings, the adjusted school correlations are very low, accounting for around 1 per cent of the total variance, while the contribution of neighbourhoods is close to zero. Our findings suggest that adolescent school and neighbourhood contexts are not major determinants of children’s later-life socio-economic attainments in the Norwegian welfare state setting.

Norway is a very particular case. Small population, homogenous population; Sovereign Wealth Fund nation which decouples national policy from the necessity of national productivity (for as long as the fund lasts.)

However, the research is consistent with much other sociological and psychological research of recent years. Genes are far more important than we anticipated. Past a bare minimum of competency, home environment, school environment, and neighborhood are not nearly as deterministic for population level outcomes as was once believed. IQ and personality traits are far more predictive than was thought to be the case. Since IQ and personality traits (as predicates to behavior) are substantially predetermined via genes, this has the hallmarks of some Huxleyite Brave New World. See also the research of Alan Krueger and Gregory Clark.

So don't worry about getting into just the right school, club, neighborhood, etc. Genetically determined potential will not be denied. Beyond the basics, which school you attend doesn't matter. Which neighborhood you live in doesn't matter.

I accept the implications of the research but retain a conviction that family and cultural elements are a greater importance than the studies imply

It is right to be concerned but that is likely the wrong conclusion. Yes, genes, via expression in IQ and behavior, are determinative at a population level. But not necessarily at the individual level. Free will, chance and personal choices still have their place.

But there are powerful economic and ideological interests who reject this research. Any K-12 or University wants you to believe that there are gradations of school performance which make a material difference to your life outcomes. The Krueger research suggests that past the bear minimum, there is no value premium attached to any particular school once IQ and behavior/personality are controlled for.

Similarly, virtually the entirety of modern leftist ideology is built on the myth and mania over institutionalized power structures. If you believe in privilege and systemic bias of power-structures, then the preferred solutions to inequality and disparate impact (bussing, quotas, regressive taxes, pro-active governmental racism, etc.) all make sense.

And they don't make sense if inequality and disparate impact arise from IQ and behavior/personality.

While no means settled, the data and argument for IQ and behavior/personality (and therefore importances of genes) is far more well established and replicated than anything we have for CO2 induced AGW. Yet the former is rejected and the latter endorsed, not because of the evidence but because of ideological compatibility.

The one thing which the far Left fear, and I think legitimately, is that if this knowledge of the importance of genetics becomes more widely rooted, it will lead to more eugenic type decisions. They are right to fear this because of the historical evidence. Socialist and Communist regimes, unconstrained by religion, have always ended up pursuing eugenic population policies.

The only system which has been able to accommodate both the scientific reality of gene driven variance AND the desire for egalitarian treatment has been free markets, democracy, and Age of Enlightenment thinking constrained by Christian norms. Some other religion might be as equally effective but our historical record is limited to that where Age of Enlightenment mindset emerges from and operates within the context of Christianity.