[jiggy2011]

I noticed this too, whenever I read anything about American Universities (I'm in the UK) for CS it always seems to be one of those 3 especially when it's related to startups.

Is it the case that a CS degree is somehow considered second rate if it is not from one of these universities? Is it a prestige thing or do all the other universities suck for CS?

Obviously we have similar in the UK to an extent with Oxford/Cambridge etc but CS degrees from most universities are well enough respected.

I've done some of the online classes from these 3 universities as well as watched youtube videos from some lectures. For the most part they don't strike me as being especially more difficult than what I did for my CS undergrad (in most cases the difficulty level seems about the same).