>My point is that for someone who could have gotten into Stanford, the actual admission it isn't defining.
I didn't get into Stanford (or anything like that, best I did was UNC in-state) - what exactly are my options here? It seems to me what you just said only applies to my intellectual superiors who are choosing between Stanford and UC Irvine, not the people that go to UC Irvine or Santa Cruz or Merced because they couldn't get into Berkeley or Stanford (who make up the majority of the country).
The fact is that people have this weird idea that college doesn't matter come from a position of immense privilege that someone like me doesn't even have the capacity to fathom. Of course it matters - being a Cardinal is a life-long thing, but being a member of the Wolfpack is more of a temporary embarrassment at best.
