[kevintb]

Perhaps for you; not for my experience.

Also, you get as much as you put in. I’ve had plenty of awful professors but found ways to study in my own time, do my own projects and read papers on top of the curriculum I was learning. You can’t expect to passively receive the best possible education by top notch teachers, especially in research institutions.

Lastly, your first sentence neatly proves my point that elite/“top 2” programs are more about signaling and working for a FAANG. Not everyone judges the worth of their career by salary or proximity to a FAANG, and I would consider it extremely wasteful and sad if someone considered the biggest benefit of a top tier CS education to be landing a FAANG job.

[icebraining]

> study in my own time, do my own projects and read papers

You mean, the stuff you can do without enrolling? Yeah, that's the point.

[mcguire]

I've had plenty of awful professors, too, but some of the best I had were excellent researchers, both mid- or late career or just out of grad school themselves.

Not sure what that means.