This is such a fun thing to think back on (and my decision-making process was very different for college vs. grad school vs. law school (yeah yeah, I took a long time to get through school). My college process started with me thinking that I wanted to study neuroscience and thinking about small liberal arts schools - but then I visited some and realized they were way too small for my taste. I grew up in a midwestern college town with a state school of about 30,000 students, and that definitely formed my sense of what a college should feel like. Had great test scores, lower-middle class parents, and applied somewhat broadly to larger prestigious but not necessarily Ivy schools (Wash U, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern, etc.). I had a couple state schools in the mix as safeties, but was pretty determined to get out of my home state. Then in March, I got a packet from University of Kansas saying basically "Hey, it's not too late to come here for free, national merit finalist!" - so I went down for a campus visit focused on the honors college and scholarship halls (amazing sub-communities at a big school) and really loved it. Ended up needing to decide between Northwestern and KU, and my folks steered my prestige-conflicted self towards the free option. Great decision.
Post-grad choices in a nutshell: grad school (psych PhD) - went to the best school I got into for my area of focus (psycholinguistics). Handily, this was also the program that I liked best, and in a town that I felt very comfortable in. 2 years later realizing that I'm not cut out for academia, I applied to joint degree programs in law and public policy, and went to the best school I got into (slightly complicated by differing rankings for law vs. policy, but the law rankings won out). Again, this also luckily lined up with the school I liked best. No regrets (4 years left to go on student loans...).