I got my Bachelors, and currently finishing my Ms, at a state univ. For PhD I have applied to top four schools in my field. (Haven't heard back from anyone yet). A big name can be really intimidating. In my junior year (2005), the city had shut down for a month and I had to move to a different school to stay enrolled. This temp school is among the top 10 schools, one of the biggest campus in the country with an enrollment of 55,000 students. I was pretty nervous, but very soon realized that the quality of education at my own small state school was much higher. For a junior level course, the finals had questions that were solved on the board during the lectures. To top it all, it was an open book exam :shock: . Maybe it was just this one course but generally students there gave a rats ass to education. Not that they care much at my state univ, but I thought that my school has some excellent profs. But nevertheless, once at the grad level, you can't beat a ranked school. I realized that the big names are too busy in getting credit for cutting edge research. They are too busy pushing, funding and teaching the grad students. And they sort of forget the undergrad.
Big Name = takes money from the undergrads to pay for the grad students who help with the research work. They do the bare minimum for undergrads because their focus is research. The profs are too busy in the research labs.
Small Name = don't have much of a grad student body or the money to pay for research, so they focus on undergrads. The profs have more time to teach students.
I guess people who do get their undergrad from a small state school and go on to do their grad studies at a top 10 school are the ones who are getting the best of BOTH the worlds.
Good Luck to everyone.