I tell my students that you can get a good education anywhere if you want to, if you're willing to put in the work to get the education as opposed to just the school name:
I am not against being a good student, and there are clear advantages to doing well in school. But you don’t need to be a top student or go to a highly selective college to have a successful and fulfilling life. The path to success is not nearly so narrow as we think.
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I’ve been saying this for decades - for engineering at least, as long as the school is fully accredited and is at least mid-tier, at least 90% of the variation in outcomes is the student. There are nuances - some specialties may only be available at certain schools - but, especially for undergraduate engineering degrees, it’s mostly the student.
I'm reminded of the quote from Bill Gates at a university graduation.
"Be kind to the 'C' students. You'll probably be working for one."
We ran into a problem last year when our then senior was applying to college. We'd spent so long talking about getting into a good school, that she was upset when her choices were a bit more limited than she wanted, and when her classmates were all getting into prestige schools.
Though, over the years, I had said that you can get a good education anywhere, and that it really was about what you do with the years at U, in the end, too many of our messages were sending the wrong signals.
In the end, she's at a state's flagship U, and is doing very well there.
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