Goaliedad, while I do appreciate your insight and advice... Using your logic, why should any intelligent high school student work hard and make an effort to get into a top university? He would be better off doing nothing during his high school years, go to a community college and play big fish in a small pond. Of course I too am playing devil's advocate too at this point, to the opposite extreme.
Having come from an extremely competitive high school, I am under the impression that ranking means that much more. This is especially the case in the field I'd like to go into, finance. When the top investment banks go out to recruit analysts, where do they look first? The top business schools of course. Moreover, I don't want to have "wasted" the work I did put in during high school. It seems very counter-intuitive to strive for something, achieve it, only to give it up and settle for something you could have worked much less for. And maybe even more importantly, the folks at home (who were already hesitant in allowing their son to join the military in the first place) wouldn't be too happy if I decided to transfer to somewhere they've never heard of.
With regards to the "going the community college route" concept, I think you misread my remarks about rank of school. I didn't say it doesn't matter, but that it comes below other things including GPA. Yes, there is a tradeoff between the 2 items - ranking (directly related to difficulty to achieve top grades) and GPA. Beyond a certain point, there is not a significant increase to your GPA by lowering the ranking of your school. For each person, that is a different place in the spectrum. Of course a 4.0 from a better school is always better than a 4.0 from a lesser school.
So you should study hard in high school. Not because it gets you into a more prestigous school, but because it will make you a more prepared student at whatever school you attend.
Interesting though to see your comment about coming from an extremely competitive high school. It is consistent with how you perceive ranking of undergraduate school in the race to the top.
You make an assumption that the top undergrad finance school is the best path to a career in finance. If the last degree you achieve is an undergraduate degree, this MAY be true. However, I do know a few people who went to schools like Williams, Amherst, and Bowdoin who went to work at some of the top investment firms on Wall St. without an undergrad degree in Business (these are Liberal Arts colleges).
You can work your way up the food chain with an undergrad in finance from the bottom, OR you can enter at a higher level with a masters in finance and lower the chances that you get stuck on that bottom rung at the firm.
And getting a masters in finance after pursuing a bachelors is a bit redundant and it says your undergrad years were a waste of time.
Now if your goal is to serve your country for a few years and then turn your undergrad into a career building upon your work experience in the service, your work experience in the service will be far more important to that next employer than the school where you got that undergrad degree a several years earlier.
After receiving my first job offer after earning a business degree from Berkeley over 25 years ago, only my current employer (in higher education) has asked about my degree as a qualification for my position. And a masters degree from a bi-directional institution actually carries more weight than my undergrad in my industry.
One last thought about your comment about getting a degree that you could have worked much less for... You can get a lot more out of a lesser school than you think, if you choose to apply yourself. The school my daughter attends is a second tier state university. It has a Rhodes Scholar to its credit in the recent past. Obviously, that person didn't take the name of the school and say, "I'll just do enough to get my 4.0" and mail it in. My point is that if you have the talent and work hard, there are a lot of schools where you can be very successful. And when a "star" shows up at a smaller institution, s/he is a lot more visible and won't have to compete for the professorial resources necessary to take it to the next level.
As to your parent's attitude towards school prestige, it is their problem and to some degree your problem if you cannot sell what you are achieving elsewhere. And that is all about your confidence in your plan and its execution.
I won't get into people getting business degrees for the wrong reason, but if you truly are facinated by finance and business economics, I would actually recommend an undergrad in math or statistics followed by a masters (or maybe phd) in finance. If you are in finance because it promises a good income, you will find that the work is unfufilling and you will only measure your happiness by the size of your bank account which will never be big enough.
I don't mean to be harsh in my assessment here, but I've been around the block a couple of times and have seen plenty of kids who, for lack of the life experience understanding how careers work, look for the quick path to the lucrative position (before age 30) and find that the path is a lot more difficult than imagined (because it is so crowded with lots of equally bright and hard working kids) and not quite what it is cracked up to be once achieved and very difficult to keep up with because there is always another generation of hungrier and even better educated kids coming up behind them.
Better get off my soap box and go to be now. It is always a pleasure to exchange thoughts with someone who is trying to piece together their path in life.
My grades have consequently taken the hit. On top of that, I am very unsatisfied by the general environment of my battalion. We seem to lack the motivation and opportunities enjoyed by others that Iv'e heard. (A good friend of mine is also a scholarship cadet at another battalion.) 
