Originally Posted by HowlerKarma
a) Everything about HYPS is, well-- hype. No. It isn't. The prestige is there for a reason. It is a premium education.
Do we know that for sure? Will a student who gets into Harvard but chooses to attend the state flagship learn less over 4 years? I'd be interested to see a regression of GRE subject exam scores (or GRE general or MCAT or LSAT scores) on student SAT/ACT scores and on the average SAT/ACT score of the school attended (a measure of prestige). I would not be surprised if the coefficient on the prestige measure was not statistically significant and that only incoming SAT/ACT scores were needed to predict graduate school entrance exam scores.

These videos are amusing:
Harvard Graduates Explain Seasons
Roving Reporter: Canada,
although of course one does not know how random the sampling of students was.