<p>Having worked in the “real world” (not academia) I can say that, unfortunately, prestige matters. There are two different things when it comes to “school”. There is education and there is accreditation. Education can be achieved without ever setting foot in a university. This is the information age and there are plenty of resources out there that will allow you to educate yourself virtually for free.</p>
<p>Accreditation is what you go to school for. This is that little piece of paper that says a particular someone thinks you know something. In this case, who the particular someone is matters a lot. For extreme comparison, if my dad says I know how to build a house that is very different from a world renown architect saying I know how to build a house. In either case I know how to build a house regardless of who is claiming it.</p>
<p>If you are looking for accreditation (which almost all university students are) then you should go to the most prestigious school you can get in to. You want someone of import claiming that you know something.</p>
<p>I could rant on here all day long about how broken the system is that rewards prestige over actual knowledge and how objective (i.e.: test based) accreditation is a far superior means of analyzing the skills of a potential employee. However, we don’t live in an ideal world and in the real world your employer is more likely to care about prestige than actual knowledge so I can only recommend shooting for prestige.</p>
<p>However, there is something to say for a personal portfolio as well. If you can go to an “easy” university and have free time to build a personal portfolio that may do you better than going to a hard university and coming out with no portfolio.</p>