Here's my take: I went to Shit Hole State University, well outside of cali and SV. In the cubicle next to me was a Stanford Master's grad. He and I made similar salary, did similar work. He got to be in more debt, though, and as a bit of a bonus he bragged about stanford and software quality, etc blah blah. I told him all software startup code is garbage and quietly to myself he should just work on the product. He quit, startup got sold and I cashed out. Sure I was lucky but his whole attitude was wrong.

Back at SSU I knew of another Stanford grad who was humble and was genuinely into software and all around a spiffy guy. And he knew more than my cube-neighbor.

Here's thing thing about "it" schools like Stanford, MIT: it's something of an illusion. Sure they great schools and they do the best research, if that is where you want to go (something I had a hard time doing at SSU). Before I got hired I worked on my own stuff, contributed code and had all-around genuine extracurricular fun messing around with systems, hacking, and reading about binary analysis and security. That's the kind of stuff that gets you somewhere. Not going to "it" schools gives you the freedom to pick what your extracurricular stuff is, though. :)

I guess my advice is to do what ever you want. In life there are front doors that are jammed and there are back windows you can slip in unnoticed if you know where to look.