JS.....agree completely...would add that IMO not every student at Duke or Stanford gets the same "rarified" education..in fact, Duke offers an Art History major....my daughter goes to Univ. of South Florida (USF), is in the Honors College, has had fabulous professors, Econ and Public Admin. double major w/ minor in business, probably will get a masters, 4.0 gpa... (my apologies for being such a proud dad)...my point is she turned down Ivy League to stay closer to home and still getting a superior education from a "lower ranked" school....
Dave,
I agree you can get a great education anywhere. I went to an Ivy League school undergraduate, and post graduate school at UConn. My kids both went to UConn after being homeschooled (skipping grammar and high school) and my son graduated in the Honors program, and then went to UConn Law where he is entering his third year. My daughter is entering her senior year at Uconn, and wants an MFA in writing, preferably from Iowa. Both my kids went to Community College at a very young age (10 and 11) and eventually got their Associates Degrees, transferring to UConn as juniors. Because of their age, I often took courses with them at Community College, and I discovered that the quality of instruction there was better than I remember from my Ivy Alma Mater (I am particularly thinking of calculus. Although when I took that as an undergraduate we were still using slide rules and log tables.) You can get an excellent education anywhere, public or private colleges or even community colleges. The trouble with some of the "better" universities is that they have the top professors, but they may or may not be the top teachers. The skills for being a top researcher aren't the same for a top teacher.

