Several of the comments lead me to believe that people aren't reading to the end of the article.
Robin's final conclusion is that the more prestigious name does matter, and that the study has been misinterpreted.
That's why he says "Ack! I was almost conned by elite journal editors and media reporters into believing a comforting lie!"
Moreover, a response to the Krueger and Dale study's methodology by Avery and Hoxby in the article "Do and Should Financial Aid Packages Affect Students' College Choices?" National Bureau of Economic Research (Cambridge, MA), 2003 showed that Krueger and Dale aggregated their data in a way that tended to underrepresent the advantage of going to the better college for ALL students, not just low-income students. So if you carefully read the Krueger and Dale study, you can tease out an advantage to the better colleges that they admit is especially strong for low-income students. But they might have found an even stronger effect size if they had analyzed their data differently.
Anyway, yes, for low-income students who manage to get admitted the lesson from all studies is clear: go to the best college that admitted you, and take advantage of your opportunity for an elite education.
Robin's final conclusion is that the more prestigious name does matter, and that the study has been misinterpreted. That's why he says "Ack! I was almost conned by elite journal editors and media reporters into believing a comforting lie!"