My wife and I both went to a middle ranking engineering/science oriented university in the UK - she later went on to go to one of the top law schools in the UK.

My wife and I both went to a middle ranking engineering/science oriented university in the UK - she later went on to go to one of the top law schools in the UK. She was shocked at how poor the actual academic standards at the latter "prestigious" organisation were - even though everyone spent a lot of time congratulating themselves for being at a top law school. It was much more difficult to get into that law school (unless you were "connected" of course) - but they really didn't expect much of people once they were there.