[seanmcdirmid]

For undergraduate, UW is primarily a school for work class locals; we were not rich enough to go to nice prep schools and then afford the tuition of a nice Ivy league school. But then Seattle is also a fairly sophisticated upper-middle class city, so why not make the school in your backyard very good? That tuition is rising sucks; I paid $800 a quarter when I started in '93, and could get by mostly paying my own way; that is obviously no longer possible. But it is still relatively affordable if you live at home as well as a first-class research institution, Seattlites still want to send their kids there while UW is getting increased attention from China/India/the rest of asia (UW always did actually, 90% of the international students hail from somewhere in Asia). As a working class school, UW is definitely elite, but compared to other much elite schools for the elite then ya, UW is not Stanford.

I rarely interact with other people from UW CSE, this is the case even in Seattle as its just not a very big program. However, I do know a couple of UW CSE graduates where I work today (Beijing China).