That is my feeling too. There are many great people that go to schools that are not top 50 undergrad. The actual school rankings depend on some variables that, stastically speaking, smaller schools are not likely to be high in, but it doesn't necessarily reflect on the education given by those smaller schools.
A school in the northeast that is centuries old is going to have tradition and history that a school in the midwest does not. The longer a school is around, the more years it has to perfect it's education. I do believe that many of the schools in the northeast that are older provide a great eduction and are probably better than many of the schools in the midwest. (I choose midwest because 1) that's where i live and 2) the costal areas, east & west, were populated far ealier than the midwest and the trend continues to this day.)
One of the best things offered by some of these "top 50 schools" is the networking. This is important in finding a job and being successful, but great networking does not necessarily equate with good education. A stupid person that graduated from XYZ University can hire another stupid person that recently graduated from XYZ University. The education is bad, but by networking standards, that recent grad was able to network and get a job easily with XYZ University alumni.
Furthermore, If you compare a large school to a small school and judge the success of the large school by the number of millionaires (or billionaires as I read recently in an online article), then the larger school has an advantage purely by the numbers. If you have a student body of 65,000, you have a lot more chances that one, or many, of them will start business that grow to become huge. If the large school has 65 people that grow huge companies on their own, they have a success rate of 1 in 1000. Where as as school with 6500 people must have 1 in 100 people to achieve the "same" success rate, unless you actually look at percentages. Few people analyze this area so closely as to look at percentages. Rarely would a smaller school even get noticed, but this doesn't mean the education is crappy.
I went to a very small school and the last 2 years of my schooling, I had many classes in my major that were very, very small. (4 - 8 people total) These classes were taught by a Ph.D. Not a graduate assistant with very little experience. An incredibly smart, published, accomplished, dedicated professor with a Ph.D. To have the opportunity to sit in a class with 3 other students and the professor and discsuss political theory is amazing. You can't slack off even if you want to. In this sense, I believe the education I received is better than at a larger school. If only 4 people sign up for a class like this, most likely, it's going to get cancelled. Additionally, with a larger class, you don't have to participate unless you actually want to. With 4 people, the professor knows, and cares, who is talking and actively engaged those that didn't say anything. We all could quickly tell if someone wasn't prepared for class. It only happened about twice at the beginning of the semester as no one wanted to be embarrased like that.
A name-brand school is just that...a name brand. People at that school will tell you they do so much more to give a quality education than rely on their name. Education goes way beyond a name and I believe those that judge a school's ability to provide an edcuation simply by it's size and name are shallow.
raabenb wrote:
I have read that many of the top programs aim for diversity both within demographics and undergrad institutions (even stating in their promo materials how many undergrad institutions are represented). I personally know of plenty of people from my UG (large unranked state school) who have gotten into top-tier b-schools including H/S/W. I have a feeling that if your specific "crappy" UG is not represented in their student body, they may look at you a bit more favorably. But they probably will not let in more than one or two from any given lower-tier school unless they are dealing with real superstars.