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<p>An education is what you put into it, not what others (no matter how talented they are) put into it. Yes, quality professors help. [But note: Best researcher is not always the best teacher.] Yes, a certain minimum intellectual quality in your peers in the class helps. [But note: peers don’t do the learning for * you*.]</p>
<p>For evidence, I suggest that you start with Colleges that Change Lives and Harvard Schmarvard. While both books have a clear, open and obvious anti-ivy bias, they both do mention studies that have been done that indicate folks who attended non-prestigious colleges, but who had admissions statistics that were high enough to make they competitive for gaining admission to an ivy tend to do just as well 10–20 * years * after graduating from college as the ivy grads themselves do in terms of both income and contributions.</p>
<p>If you look through CEO biographies, you’ll see that many, many more of them graduate from Podunk U’s than the Ivies. It’s not that the Ivies are under represented amongst CEOs; it’s rather that somebody with the drive to become a CEO of a company has the drive to do what it takes to get the best education anywhere they are likely to go.</p>
<p>If you look at professor’s vitas, you’ll see plenty of them graduate from colleges you’ve never heard of for their undergraduate degree. And plenty of the best, top-notch researchers in the sciences did their graduate work at land-grant universities in the midwest instead of the ivies, Caltech, MIT, Standford and Berkeley. And there are plenty of Ivy PhD’s teaching at Podunk U’s as well—sometimes because they really like teaching and sometimes because the job market for PhD’s in anything is really, really tight and you consider yourself lucky to get a tenure track position anywhere.</p>
<p>I’m not saying a degree from a prestigious university makes no difference. I am saying that the difference it makes for most students is far less than they may believe.</p>