I agree with your comments on the snootiness factor in that calculus is calculus whether taught at Harvard or Woodchuck State. I also know a corporate recruiter who prefers to hire engineers from Union, Bucknell, and Lehigh, rather than MIT and Cal Tech, because he wants engineers who can walk and chew gum at the same time.
LOL!
Great! That reminds me of something that really happened once, long ago, involving an MIT man.
My dad was an electronics officer in the Air Force in the mid-50's, assigned to construction of the Pine Tree Line and the DEW Line air-defense networks across northern Canada and Greenland. He was based, and we lived, in Newfoundland, and from there he travelled in all seasons of the year, weather permitting, to construction and base sites at lovely places like Narsarssuak, Thule, Goose Bay, and occasionally Keflavik, often staging out of Gander Field, the big airfield in east-central Newfoundland. On one trip, he met a young MIT man who'd been sent up to Thule, who showed up in a short-sleeved shirt in brutally cold weather. Amazed, my old man asked him, well, where's your cold-weather gear? Shirts, underwear, parka? "Nobody told me to bring anything" was his reply. He was going to Greenland, which was cold in "summer" -- and he showed up in shirtsleeves! Unbelievable.
But I'm sure he was aces on the theory.