@lastposts, in the topic question, what do you mean by “favor”?
If you’re asking whether employers will offer different salaries depending on your alma mater’s rank/prestige, the answer almost certainly is “no”. If you’re asking whether they’ll target campus recruiting to some T30-40 schools more than others, the answer is “maybe”. Even in that case, factors like location and size may matter at least as much as school prestige (although some industries, investment banking in particular, appear to be more prestige-conscious than others.)
For medical or law admissions, I doubt your college brand per se will matter. Chicago may have higher admission rates just because it cherry-picks higher-scoring students in its own college admissions (so its applicants would be expected to have higher MCAT/LSAT scores). For PhD programs, UChicago does have higher per capita completion rates than Berkeley or Michigan. The reasons why are not completely clear,* but again, I doubt the college brand per se has much if any impact on admissions if these are the 3 schools we’re comparing. Students from all 3 schools with comparable GPAs and equally mature research interests should have about the same shot for doctoral program admissions, I would think.
- Whether UChicago's higher *completion* rates are due primarily to selection effects or to treatment effects is hard to answer confidently, one way or another. UChicago is more selective than Berkeley or Michigan. UChicago spends much more on instruction per student than Berkeley or Michigan. These and other characteristics may have positive impacts on some outcomes (like PhD completions) but not on all others (like professional school admissions or financial ROI), and would not necessarily be worth a price premium for all students. So (bottom line) it would be reasonable to focus on net cost and personal fit.