Yeah, SV is really just the bubbliest-of-bubbles. It attracts so much talent, and is funneled so aggressively in so localized a market, that your anecdotal observation of "everyone and their mother went to an Ivy League or similar" is probably more true than most people might expect. Such is life, and it ain't fair.

UW is a great school. UW is what most people should realistically aspire to (as that caliber of school). It's upper-middle-class; it will most likely give you a great education and a great life.

UW is not Stanford/MIT/Harvard/etc. though. Those are not upper-middle-class schools; those are upper-upper-class schools. And it's not really the quality of education content either, at least if we're talking about average outcomes (but at the margins, ~2+ standard deviations away from the mean, it's no contest).

If anything, this should signal that SV has gone too far and the labor market is acting irrationally by competing so much for educational branding. However, just like the old adage says, the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.