and make nothing of the special resources that you could capitalize on?
>>Stanford University undergraduate
>>has world class faculty and low enough undergrad enrollment to get to know profs
>>even if you performed middle of the pack here you'd likely get into the PhD program of your choice at Stanford as long as you did undergrad research (+ that magical brand on your CV/transcript)
>>a good half of the spots are given to humanities stacies, retarded minorities, etc. who will never make use of anything at Stanford except the reputation in the job market for Stanford BA's in poli sci perhaps
meanwhile you're at a middle of the road state university or unknown international school busting your ass to make a 3.9+ in physics/CS/engineering/etc to get a slim chance at making it into a grad school like Stanford, if you were already at Stanford you'd be given highly preferential access to any grad program and you'd benefit from their lack of grading rigor (average undergrad grade is like an A-), opening up time to get a research assistant job or something (faculty at small private institutions are obliged to help undergrads to a greater degree than big state universities so even below average kids can do "research" even if it's glorified make-work)