I also turned down an Ivy (Yale) for every reason you just mentioned, and couldn't be happier I did so. I didn't wanna go into debt, I wanted to have more fun, the program at Utah (where I go) was better than Yales to begin with, I would be able to do research all 4 years of college, and, most of all, when I went to go on my visit it was full of a bunch of absolute DOUCHEBAGS (perfectly exhibited by SPSS) that all they wanted to talk about was "My momey/daddy works on wallstreet", "I have a 140 iq, everyone look at me", "how much do your parents make a year?".
I have also done two internships in the north-east, full of ivy league kids, and besides MIT not a single one of the kids knew how to apply any type of engineering skill. There was a girl from Columbia in my design project that didn't know how to make a basic circuit (literally couldn't apply Ohms law) and didn't understand how a negative feedback loop worked. All of the kids from the Ivy's were just starting to get experience in their junior/senior years as this is generally how the ivy's treat their engineering students. Bottom line, MANY of the state schools have MUCH better engineering programs then the Ivy's. I would WAY rather go to UMich/UWisconsin/UWashington than any of the Ivy's, and generally the industry thinks in much the same way.
