Things I cared about in my college search:
- proximity to home
- cost
- engineering program quality
- fit / whether I felt happy there
Things I did not care about in my college search:
- other people’s opinions of what I should do
- other schools that I could have gotten into that did not fit the above requirements
You don’t know anyone else nor their college search, collegehelp. Your generalizations are baseless and embarrassing. So you want you and/or your kids to chase prestige – that’s fine. Doesn’t mean everyone else has to or wants to.