If you want to go to a very competitive school like MIT, probably. Generally the "best" schools are those that have better access to good professors, and resour

If you want to go to a very competitive school like MIT, probably. Generally the "best" schools are those that have better access to good professors, and resources that the brightest can best take advantage of. Now you can be bright and not want to make a lot of money out of MIT, but generally the assumption is that in capitalism if it is valuable it is worth money, and if you go into a job that pays a lot you are doing a more valuable job than if you were doing something that paid less. If you want to go into a less competitive career, going into a less competitive school can make a lot sense, often because the less competitive schools can have better programs appealing to less lucrative fields because the pressure is less severe than it is for an MIT undergrad.