Man, now I remember why I didn’t look at this thread for a week.
Anyway, I agree with @websensation that those of us who went to elite privates are less likely to put them on a pedestal.
So sure, the proportions of the most academically stellar or gifted kids or whatever is different at different schools (though you also have to factor in honors colleges and elite scholarship programs, which have higher concentrations of the better academic students). Whether that is better or not or worth paying a ton more for or not, however, is debatable and depends on the kid (and the school and the program). For instance, the alums of the elite scholarship programs like the Morehead-Cain at UNC and McDermott at UTD seem to do just as well after graduation as Ivy/equivalent grads. Morehead-Cain actually produces more Rhodes Scholars per capita than any of HYPSM (and it’s not even close). Plus, most of us don’t plan on dying right after undergrad. A top student in the UTD business honors program is now in some quantitative master’s program at Stanford. I get the feeling that he’s not going to somehow have an inferior network compared to someone who went to Stanford for undergrad. And he’d almost certainly be paying less than a full-pay undergrad at Stanford (UTD almost certainly was a full-ride or close for him and 2 years of Stanford costs less than 4 years of Stanford).
Honors colleges differ too. Some have more amazing perks than others.