Does an Ivy League Degree Really Make a Difference?

According to Malcolm Gladwell, author of recent bestseller Outliers, not really. For example, Gladwell points out the following list of colleges boasting the last 10 American Nobel laureates in Chemistry:

City College of New York
City College of New York
Stanford
University of Dayton, Ohio
Rollins College, Florida
MIT
Grinnell College
MIT
McGill University
Georgia Institute of Technology

Gladwell's point is simply that going to a less-than-elite college or university doesn't prevent anyone from achieving major success. He also points out, quite rightly I think, that if you're smart enough to get into an elite school, then you're smart enough to succeed no matter where you choose to go to college. It's not the college that makes you smart. It's you.