My ex girlfriend was Chinese. She thought I was making a mistake by deciding to go somewhere other than Stanford for graduate school, that I was settling for something beneath me.
When I explained to her that as a professor, she or I would probably teach at places other than the school she or I studied at, she conceded that maybe she too would be willing to study at a place like Harvard.
It seems in China, theres only a couple of good schools. In America, the quality of 100 or 200 of the more prominent schools is probably rather indistinguishable. I never even applied to the Ivy league schools in undergrad, I just applied to the state schools and went to the one I liked best.
Also in China, people seem to go to great lengths to prove that theyre not one of the peasants. In America, people dont seem to need to make that distinction as often, if ever.
Also, if you have data supporting your hypothesis, I would be very interested to see it.