Good lord...Wisconsin fans talk about their academic standards like they are Harvard and MIT all rolled into one. I grew up in Big Ten country (not the expanded one) and Wisconsin is where you went when you could not get into the other Big Ten schools...maybe that has changed a lot.
I believe you 100%...In Chicago the UW degree is not opening doors for you, anymore than Iowa or Indiana and less so then the other schools I mentioned, but you probably know that and a lot of it is really just the networking. What do you do for the Illini? Do you live by campus?
Chicago has a weird obsession with Notre Dame. It's a good school, but no better than the best of the Big Ten. I'm a postdoc researcher at U of I right now. Finishing up and moving on in the fall.