As a Midwesterner I agree with much of what has been written. About 30 percent of the class attends the state flagship. But not kids in the top 1 -2 percent. They generally attend ivys or Ivy equivalents. The top 2 percent of my daughters class went Stanford, Yale, Columbia, Penn, Duke and U Chicago. That’s pretty typical. The top kids have it drilled into them ( from other kids) that while the flagship is good and highly highly selective for Engineering, it’s not something they should be considering. I thought that was a shame.