<p>To expand a little on what wis75 says, the not HarvardPrincetonYale Ivies don’t carry nearly as much weight out of the northeast. I know this is inexplicable to anyone east of the Pittsburgh, but a student can get a more recognizable degree in many places in the rest of the country than, say, Brown or Dartmouth. Here in Washington the average hiring manager knows more about UW grads than Brown grads, has hired a lot more of them, and is confident in what they are getting as a new employee. The non-HYP Ivy Leaguers are (mostly) just a reputation if you don’t come from the northeast. I would say that on the west coast, especially, you get a lot more recognition from Caltech, Berkeley, Stanford, etc., than from the “other” Ivies.</p>
<p>I got a chuckle out of the OP’s assumption that anyone attending an Ivy is in the “top” 1%. Picture a Venn diagram with “top 1% high school grads” in one bubble, and “Ivy League students” in the other. No matter how you define those terms, the two bubbles overlap, but are NOT the same.</p>