Is someone implying that if someone had a choice between Harvard and lets say MAHARISHI university, you'd go to MAHARISHi so that your quality of work would be better there in the long run????????? PLEASE, gimme a hypocritical break! Ashu, with due respect, are u saying tht your quality of work now is not above par? If you asked principal investigators in their field, to make your quality of work stand out, u'd have to go into top notch school. ok not so muh in undergrad. If you are say in not top thirty, for instance in science, you'd be left out of the cutting edge research loop anyways. so even if u worked your azz all yor life, you might just fall short! Just like sex sells in media, name sells in academia. You can say this and that to feel good about yourself, but bottomline is brand name sells. Ivies will be preferred, not only for jobs and positions, but also for brides/grooms. Passinthru, in all seriousness, if she didn't get into a good US school, i'd go for mcgill. not only for its reputation, because she wouldn't have to live through superficial and hypocritical bullshit everyday just like you see in this forum!