puszysty

School rank does and doesn't matter. It matters in relation to what you want to do. If you want to be a Supreme Court Justice, you'd better go to Yale or Harvard. If you want to work in a high-powered NY firm, you'd better be in that top ten-ish range. If you want to be a professor, it depends on where you want to be a prof. The higher profile the school you want to teach at, the higher profile school you need to go to (though there are more things--like unique job experience and scholarly work--that are major factors, too).

If you want to work at a good-but-not-famous firm, the elite/semi-elite (top ten vs. top thirty) distinction...I really don't get the feeling that there's much of a difference. And if that wasn't enough for you to think about, there's the added wrinkle of class rank, and the eternal question of does it look better to be top of your class in a top thirty school or middle-of-the-pack in a top ten school? Opinions vary. Personally, I think excelling wherever you are is more valuable, but I don't have a lot of experience. Do you have certain firms/jobs you're targeting? Do they do on-campus interviews at your school? That's a good indicator that you're going to a school that's "good enough" (taking geography into account, of course).

One thing they probably aren't telling you to think about but that you should is how much debt you're going to leave school with. That will have a big impact on what kinds of jobs you can reasonably and financially responsibly accept.

Hopefully that's helpful rather than confusing, though adding factors to weigh usually falls more into the category of confusing. Sorry! Good luck!