system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Is becoming a tenured professor at an R1 institution still extremely difficult for PhD graduates from top universities in their field?

I know becoming a tenured professor is insanely difficult, but how are the chances for PhD graduates from the very top universities of a particular field (i.e. MIT, Caltech, UC Berkeley, Harvard for chemistry)? Do these graduates still experience great difficulty breaking into academia?
gpt
Short answer: yes. 

Long answer: yeesssss.

They're still competitive. Chances are better if you come from a top university, since you're more likely to have had the research backing to be productive, but still not easy. And you have lots of colleagues to compete with.