I don’t think one should pay extra based on some arbitrary ranking. Each case needs to be examined separately and closely. MIT is generally considered one of the colleges that may be worth paying for, but is it a good fit for any student, even any STEM student? Obviously not. There’re plenty of examples of MIT graduates not succeeding as expected. They struggled. They lost confidence. They burned out mentally, psychologically, or even physically. They just aren’t good fit for MIT. They should have gone to some other colleges, and would have likely done better elsewhere. Another example is CS at Cornell, which is arguably the best CS program within Ivy League. However, for an advanced student who wants to specialize in certain areas, Cornell may not be the right fit as even some of its advanced CS courses are overcrowded. The student, even as a CS major, may have to wait for his/her turn, potentially not completing the set of courses in those areas in time or settling for a different set of courses in a different area.