How to neutralize an Ivy League obsession? Not disregarding that the Ivies are fine colleges in many aspects, how to deal with high-school students fixated on the idea that they need an Ivy league education, or otherwise their education would be second class. Or to deal with equally fixated people who think that academics in the Ivy league is the only golden rule (and the others are second class). Talking about this makes me sound a tad envious, but I like to make people see that many other colleges are fine too (although maybe not that famous).
It's not hard to find Ivy League alumni who will readily admit - even adamantly defend - the statement that there are other colleges in the US which are just as good academically, and that you do not have to go to an Ivy League school to get a first-class education. Of course this is purely anecdotal, not any sort of logical argument, but then again people who feel like the Ivy League is the only way to get a top-quality education in the US are also not drawing their conclusions from logic, so perhaps an emotional appeal is just what they need.

If you're talking to someone who might be open to an evidence-based approach, try asking them to name what they consider to be the top universities in the US. Or better yet, look up a few college rankings and find out which names consistently appear near the top. For example, the US News and World Report rankings for universities are headed by


  Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Stanford, University of Chicago, Duke, MIT, University of Pennsylvania, Caltech, Dartmouth


and for liberal arts colleges, by


  Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore, Bowdoin, Middlebury, Pomona, Carleton, Wellesley, Claremont McKenna, Davidson, Haverford


Forbes' top 10 are


  Stanford, Pomona, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, Swarthmore, West Point, Harvard, Williams, MIT


Beyond those I'm not sure of other ranking systems' reputation, but the Parchment rankings give as their top 10


  Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Princeton, Duke, Yale, Caltech, Pomona, Harvey Mudd, Brown


and the Academic Ranking of World Universities gives


  Harvard, Stanford, UC Berkeley, MIT, Caltech, Princeton, Columbia, U Chicago, Yale, UCLA


and so on (you get the picture). Anyway, whether this person you're talking to comes up with their own idea of the top colleges or uses one or more of these lists, it's rather unlikely that their list will match the list of Ivy League universities: Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, University of Pennsylvania, and Yale. Clearly, while a university's membership in the Ivy League is somewhat correlated with having a high ranking, it is not the only way to get one.

You could also mention that the Ivy League is actually just an athletic conference, like the Big 10. The member schools generally happen to be academically high-achieving, but membership in the Ivy League is in no way meant to be a certification of strong academics.