[AbstractCache]

I'm a student at a top 5 CS school. I feel that the majority of the value of my degree does not comes from lecture, homeworks, or exams. I feel the acess to opportunities on campus is where much of the value comes from. We have many bright, talented, and diverse people on this campus. Not only my fellow undergrads, but also the professors, grad students, researchers, employees of companies with a campus presence, etc. There's huge opportunities for collaboration on programming projects, both in class and out of class. There's a great startup culture, with a lot of campus resources. There's a slew of companies that employ students for part-time co-ops on campus. Almost every professor talks about research they would be interested in getting students involved in. We have very active IEEE and ACM student orgs. We put on a great hackathon everywhere. I could go on, but to put it short, you almost have to try to avoid opportunities to not develop yourself as a computer scientist/engineer. If you're teaching yourself, you have to be proactive in working with projects online, motivating yourself to work on personal projects, seeking out opportunities, where as on campus, the opportunities basically come to you.