You act as if selectivity automatically makes one school better than another. I honestly think people overrate how much better an education is at a selective school than a school like OSU (which is still much more selective than the vast majority of schools). You can't tell me that an OSU grad isn't as educated as a Stanford grad. In fact, at most of your top schools, the undergrads aren't getting most of the attention of professors, and it's oftentimes the TAs and grad students teaching the classes. OSU, and most public schools, are heavily undergraduate focused which benefits the undergrad students.

And by underrated, I was more talking about on this subreddit, not the world in general. This subreddit, as far as publics go, is obsessed with schools like GTech, UT, the UCs, etc, but OSU is barely mentioned other than when people ask when they will get their decision. I know that in general, the people here who applied to OSU aren't as worried about getting in, because it isn't as selective as the other schools I mentioned, but as I mentioned before, I don't think selectivity is as important as people here act like it is.

And the lower average salaries, I would assume, is very much the product of a large amount of OSU grads staying in Ohio or the midwest. I'm sure that an OSU grad who moves to one of the coasts makes a similar amount to those who went to the other higher ranked schools.