<p>ivy league = prestige and social network.</p>
<p>people would break an arm to go to an ivy school primarily because of those reasons.
in terms of academic quality, there are many schools that are as good as an ivy school, and quite a few that are slightly better than some of the ivies. </p>
<p>for example, if one is interested in computer science, many elite students would rather attend Stanford or MIT than any of the ivy school. Even Berkeley and Caltech (and to some extent, CMU) are more attractive schools for those elite comsci students than some ivy schools are.</p>