@HappyAlumnus
I would appreciate if you could point out where I misunderstood your argument. I was asking all those questions to better understand your stance because as far as I can tell, you are either arguing against an argument that nobody makes, ("under no circumstance should you ever let prestige factor in to your decision in any way shape or form) or you are strawmanning the people who say “don’t pick on prestige” when what they usually mean is “don’t pick columbia over dartmouth because even though you want to be at a small school in a small town, columbia is more prestigious than dartmouth” or “don’t pick columbia over oklahoma state because oklahoma state is offering you a full merit scholarship that will cover literally all COA + a stipend while columbia is giving you a 20k/year grant but expecting you to pay the rest with loans, and you’d rather stay closer to home but didn’t get into duke or vanderbilt.”