That does hold true for undergraduate and even some professional schools. For example, a business degree from a highly ranked business/law/engineering school will land you more interviews and most likely a higher paying job. There is a reason people pay more for ivy/top 20 schools than your local university or college.... so i agree on that part.
It's not the same for dental school. Every dental school will teach you how to do restorative, fixed, remo, endo, pedo, perio, pain control, reading radiographs, etc. Unless you're going to Harvard/Penn where you intend on specializing, 90% of the other dental schools won't make a difference when you're being hired and when it comes to salary negotiation.
Now I do agree that Tufts has a beautiful clinic and Boston is as fun a city as you're going to find. If price wasn't an issue, I would pick Tufts 10 out of 10 times. But all those other factors are not worth 80k. Unless Tufts has introduced a new secret way of doing a composite restoration that is going to increase his return of investment in the future, then there is no reason to pay 80k more for the exact same degree.
We can just agree to disagree.
As far as superior clinical preparation. This always makes me laugh. As a dentist you're going to do more procedures in your first year than you will have done in all 4 years of dental school. Any lack of clinical preparation will quickly be negated in 1 year. But that "stellar" clinical preparation is going to land you the exact same job with anywhere from 25-35% production/collection at your first job. This range is standard no matter where you went to school in most cases. Only difference is the guy at the state school will have a head start at saving up for his practice while the person at the private school will be spending more years paying off loans for the "superior" education that landed them the exact same job.
