It can make a big difference in some areas of life, but it very much depends on what you want to do with your life. If your goal is to be a police officer or an elementary school teacher, you want to go to a school where you will get a good education, but you don’t need to get a prestige education to be able to do what you would want to do. If you want to be an executive, or a politician, or an academic, or to go on to medical or law school, it can make a big difference. So, since I don’t know you or what you really want, it is hard to evaluate what would be right for you.

It’s very relative. Since undergrad degrees have become so devalued it’s gotten to where it’s much more important where you go to grad school than college in general. As to whether you should go to Ivy League or State U for a degree, it depends largely on whether you can afford it. A Harvard degree in business, for example, will probably open more doors than a degree from the U of Wisconsin, though the positions don’t necessarily pay that much more. On the other hand if you get in-state tuition in Wisconsin you’ll graduate with $80,000 less in student loans to pay back, which is a huge consideration. (It’s also well known that many people go to Ivy League who wouldn’t get in if they weren’t a legacy- the Kennedy and the Bush clans both fit in this- so it’s also known that a person from State U may be just as bright or brighter.)

Do what you have to educationally and make the best of it. Rinky-dink colleges nobody ever heard of have produced billionaires and there are Princeton grads waiting tables, so it’s ultimately what you have on the individual level that makes the difference.

Dude, it all counts. But eventually things will straighten out for all of us. Keep on studying and earn good grades; transfer and you will be fine.

Best wishes.