In terms of undergraduate learning experience, environment, grad school acceptance, career: what are the advantages of attending schools like Harvard over other top tier schools like Cornell, Columbia, Brown, etc.?
The schools are different enough from each other and the other schools that there is no general answer for any given student. It may not necessarily be the case that HYPSM are the best schools for any given student, even if s/he gets into all of them.
Those schools have better prestige than the lower IVYs.
It depends on your field. For engineering, Cornell is the strongest IVY. Either way, though, all of those schools will give you a terrific education, so you should choose on fit.
I’d say a major advantage, maybe even the main advantage, is connections.
@simba9, even there, the difference isn’t that big.
Admittedly, H is generally considered the best, Y&P have great alumni networks (especially in the Northeast), MIT is generally considered the Harvard of engineering, and S is tops in Silicon Valley/Bay Area, but outside of H, most people aren’t going to differentiate between YPSM and the other top tier elites.
And plenty of other schools have really strong alumni connections as well. In some fields/regions, stronger ones than HYPSM.
People outside of CC just don’t make the fine-grained distinctions that CC folks make.
At your local country club, your mom can impress her friends whose children go to Columbia or Georgetown until your graduation. After you graduate, it really depends what you make out of the school! You cannot go wrong with any of the top tier schools.