<p>Undergraduate education is somewhat of a wash anyway. You generally learn the same material. That’s coming from professors I’ve talked to who have taught at UNC and at Cal (both considered high quality academic schools) and teach the same material here and from professors who attended Yale, MIT, and Cornell who currently teach here. I was bored one day and watched one of MIT’s intro biology lectures on youtube (I’m a biology junior now). Personally, I thought the material was basically the same and I thought the teacher was terrible at giving the lecture (at least compared to mine).</p>
<p>A majority of the rankings is based on peer reviews (which hinge a lot on how good your graduate schools are [LSU’s aren’t that great]), endowment funds, and a few other things. </p>
<p>That being said, I know one of the kids in the article LSUguy posted. He’s worked hard during his college years (many organizations, founded some, lots of research, great grades, etc.) and when you work that hard it’s hard for great schools to turn you down. So as long as you put forth effort you should be able to go where you want to go.</p>