[stonemetal12]

Going to MIT and Harvard is more about ambition than "smarts" is my thought on it.

On average smarter, but that more has to do with population size than anything. If you limit the comparison to the top N from state schools so that you were looking at the same population size, state schools would end up out in front on the "smarts" scale but lose on the "ambition" scale.

[synergy20]

It's hard to justify the extra 200K for MIT CS degree tuition vs many public in-state universities' CS major.

My take is, if you are interested in academic research and theory study, going to ivy leagues makes sense, or if you're into law/business/medical majors, school ranking matters a lot. For a high paid IT job at undergraduate degree level, ivy league makes absolutely no sense, the extra $200K tuition is also really just a net loss.