I’m genuinely curious about the advantages of going to MIT or any other super competitive CS college for undergrad instead of say, UMass or another less-competitive CS university.
From limited knowledge and experience at other colleges (all pretty well-ranked but not as well as MIT), it’s the prestige and graduate research which makes colleges like MIT superior. Otherwise, for most undergrads it’s like a typical college experience, but with harder courses and smarter peers, but even that is flexible (since they have access to graduate students and grad-level courses).
It’s particularly relevant today because apparently college admissions are really competitive. A lot of high schoolers are upset because they got rejected from everything but their safeties, except their safeties are like Georgia Tech, Rutgers or the UCs.
Speaking from personal experience, it does help in at least two ways:
(1) Being surrounded by other hard-working students pushes you to do better and exposes you to more advanced classes and research early on (a majority of my friends in CS started taking graduate courses by their sophomore year and did undergraduate research at least for a summer in one of research labs on campus).
(2) Recruiting/Ability to get interviews. It isn't a problem in getting interviews for software engineering internships/full-time positions if you have MIT, Stanford or Berkeley on your resume.
Compare a list of companies that attend MIT's career fair vs those that attend UMass. There will be some overlap, and it's not a closed door if you don't go to MIT/Stanford/etc. But, if you want to land an internship at "the best" companies (which can often lead to jobs), being recruited at a college career fair is the best option.
From limited knowledge and experience at other colleges (all pretty well-ranked but not as well as MIT), it’s the prestige and graduate research which makes colleges like MIT superior. Otherwise, for most undergrads it’s like a typical college experience, but with harder courses and smarter peers, but even that is flexible (since they have access to graduate students and grad-level courses).
It’s particularly relevant today because apparently college admissions are really competitive. A lot of high schoolers are upset because they got rejected from everything but their safeties, except their safeties are like Georgia Tech, Rutgers or the UCs.