Well , you ' re the expert <| sep |> I attended a shitty college but also had the good fortune of spending some time at a really good college as well . In terms of classes , there won ' t be a huge difference . You ' ll generally be working from the same textbooks and will get a variety of professors some who are really good , and some who are just there to do research but also have to begrudgingly teach classes . If you plan on getting involved in research , a more prestigious school will likely have more labs . Bigger , better labs with big telescopes and particle accelerators . That doesn ' t mean you can ' t have perfectly good labs at less prestigious schools , it just means you likely won ' t have as many different types of research to get involved with . And of course , it ' s more impressive when you can say you graduated from some place people have heard of .