Yale and MIT

The perks about Ivy League schools and being lower middle class is that most (if not all) of your tuition and room/board is covered by the university if the student is accepted. Yale has their research programs bolded right under their undergraduate programs, and are obviously one of the frontrunners in emerging technology and research. The only downside is that its a whole lot of work a long ways from home. While it would be lovely to brag of going to an Ivy League school, the amount of effort needed to graduate is substantial and very competitive. I could not do well under those conditions.

The biggest difference between Yale and MIT (and probably one of the only monumental differences) is subject matter. Yale is much broader in everything it covers, whereas MIT is very technology-driven. While MIT does have humanities and the like as majors, it's not necessarily known for people graduating with those majors.

I'm lumping the Ivy Leagues into one paragraph due to their similarities in their basis and also that I get the same feeling from them both: Big, difficult to get into, competitive. None of those things were top priorities on my personal list called "Things Colleges Should Have" (a big distance from home and surrounded by a big metro city were on there. I only got one of those when choosing OSU, but such is life).