I think the OP has grossly overestimated both the uniqueness and the merits of Stanford.
It’s as if the recent Chinese obsession with the West Coast “CS + venture capitalist scene” has somehow colonized the minds of American youth (OP very much included) and convinced them that Stanford is a utopian melding of Harvard, Oxbridge, the Sorbonne, Club Med, and Shangri-La. Of course, “utopia” means “no place,” and the picture of Stanford painted by the OP in her opening lament reflects no actually existing educational institution, but rather the OP’s imagined ideal, infused with and enlivened by all sorts of emotive projections.
Hopefully, the perspective accorded by time and distance will dispel this mirage, leaving the OP better able to appreciate how blessed she was in being able to consider Columbia–one of America’s oldest and finest universities, located in America’s flagship city–as a mere fallback option.
Literature is replete with buffoonish characters who on occasion speak words of wisdom, and–bearing this in mind–the OP should take solace from the observation offered by Mr. Collins in Pride and Prejudice: “resignation is never so perfect as when the blessing denied begins to lose somewhat of its value in our estimation.”