It's all about one word: "Community." The Ivy league schools have an awesome community full of people wanting to do more than take classes and graduate. People who go there are collaborating with each other to start companies or begin research projects; no idea is too big. I go to Purdue University, and we have a ton of smart people here, we just need to start collaborating between majors to start some big things (not that Purdue grads haven't done that already!). There was an awesome presentation given by a Microsoft representative a few weeks ago, and he talked about this. That is the only difference between "them" and "us" and I use those words VERY hesitantly.
Example: Electrical Engineer designs a product, a Computer Scientist writes the code for the device, and a Marketing Major sells the product.
Basically, no and yes because we really are taking the same classes.