Is it worth transferring to a target as a junior solely for brand name and buyside recruiting from a top semi-target (after already having a top junior summer offer)?

I am a rising sophomore at a school like Georgetown/Notredame/Brown/Northwestern/Vandy. I am a top student at my current school within the top clubs with strong connections to the career center which will likely help me land a good junior year internship in the Buyside/Top BB/EB. This is extremely pretentious and assumptious, but for the context of this post, I would like you guys to evaluate my decision with the thought that I have already landed this internship.

With this in mind, I am considering attempting to transfer to a school like Duke, Columbia, Penn CAS, Dartmouth, UChicago, and Cornell. I was accepted to every single one of these schools that I applied to as an undergrad. I was only unable to attend due to an extremely unique financial situation which got me a full ride to one of the schools in the first group but required full pay for the latter list of schools, and I was not interested in finance, the only real prestige-oriented industry, at the time. My situation has kinda changed now. I understand that transfer admissions are hella difficult but I do believe that I have a chance.

Would you guys recommend transferring as a junior? I'm really stuck on this because going through covid times in my first year of school has made me realize that I really want to make the most of my college experience and have some freaking fun, and I don't think I'd really do that at UChicago, Columbia, or Cornell. Additionally, I don't want to be stuck with a bunch of snakes. I'd also lose my friends and have to start over in a new environment, where I really like my current environment, and all the other usual stuff about transferring. I legitimately am a very academically-oriented student, unlike most of this forum, and I don't really believe that I would struggle academically at even UChicago (where I would be doing the easier business econ concentration ofcourse) or Columbia.

The only benefits I see are long-term brand name and potentially better buyside recruiting. I don't know how much of buyside recruiting is predicated on school name; its likely a tertiary factor? I feel like first job, GPA, interviewing prep, and job performance matter way more? My school is one of the stronger on the first list and has connections at every MF and most other reputable shops. However, it just can't match Columbia (which admittedly I think is a huge school) which has like hundreds of alums everywhere. At the same time, I'm not sure how hard Columbia alums will pull for me, both as a junior transfer and in general, as they might not have the same sort of school spirit or connection to their school.

The second thing is school prestige. I always regretted not picking the HYPS I was accepted to, even though it was absolutely impossible in my financial situation. Maybe I'm just a prestige-oriented little bitch, but I feel I have to prove to people that I'm smart with the current school I go to, whereas having Columbia next to my name, people assume I'm smart. And I'm saying this as someone who 100% believes that the vast majority of T20 school students are interchangeable in terms of intelligence. The average students at Cornell are definitely around the average students at my school and the average students at Dartmouth. In terms of prestige, the only place where it clearly and materially matters is business school (as H/S always seem to take top privates over top publics). My school places great to H/S and I'm not really worried about lacking school prestige for b-school admissions.

Is it worth transferring? Would you guys transfer if you already had a top internship for your junior summer? Would appreciate the advice of some real professionals here who maybe have some insight as to how kids from the first group of schools are perceived and compared in the industry, and compared to the second group of schools. Are our long-term opportunities really reduced by that much, and are we really thought of as 2nd class?

I come from a very different background to most kids in Finance. I don't have much to go off of besides what I read on WSO and hear at my school, so basically 19 year olds only. Not sure how big of a real difference there is.