It’s all over. I did one MS Comp Sci at a respected vanilla state school and my MS Human Factors / Interdisciplinary at a highly ranked public. I thought the highly ranked school was easier, mostly because I liked the subject and we had brand name faculty.
My older daughter did her BA Architecture at a respected state flagship and is pursuing her M.Arch at a highly ranked public. Opposite experience from me, the demands of the ‘elite’ school dwarf those of her previous school.
Having said that, there’s a lot of ‘it depends’. When I did my undergrad CS in the vanilla state school, the programming assignments were very serious. Like, write Facebook in a weekend serious, or something like it. We compared with friends at much more respected schools, and their assignments were much easier. But I can’t extrapolate from that obviously.
I think my old cubemate (PhD CMU EE) said it best. He said, having been a TA at CMU for a while… At elite schools, even the ‘bad’ students are very good. At your typical school, the bad students are, well, bad.