I am engineer by training, and when I was in high school I was steered away from "top" engineering schools by a professional engineer who pointed out that I could get an undergraduate degree at a state school and a master's degree at MIT or Stanford for the same cost as an undergraduate degree at one of those "top" engineering schools.
I am an engineer as well, presently practicing. Engineering is a much different beast than medicine or law.
Getting into a top law firm requires you to graduate from a top law school which in turn requires you to graduate from a top undergraduate school. The same can be said for practicing medicine at a top research hospital.
Working as an engineer at a fortune 500 manufacturing company requires you to be a good engineer. I work side by side with engineers who graduated from MIT to those who went to night school working as a technician. We all take the same differential equations course. The MIT degree will get you to the head of the line in your first job but it is your work and results the keep you in employed for the long haul. No one really cares where you went to school after 20 years of experience.
Law and medicine are different. Most people want to see Harvard or Yale on the wall when they are being sued for $100 million dollars or need brain surgery. It is just the way it is.
an undergraduate degree at a state school and a master’s degree at MIT or Stanford for the same cost as an undergraduate degree at one of those “top” engineering schools.”
That is a great point.