[azundo]

Culture is also a big reason. People at Waterloo talk about engineering/CS/whatever non-stop. A colleague of mine went back to do his PhD at Western and his biggest observation was that the kids in the hall weren't talking about what project they were working on, they were talking about parties and clothes and whatever. While selection certainly helps with this, the culture of a school also has a huge impact in this regard.

[Breakthrough]

Blanket statements make Breakthrough sad :(

Your colleague probably did not base that on the engineering or CS buildings. Plenty of times I've bumped into a colleague and had a long-winded discussion about software radios, or have fun debates regarding our favourite programming languages - not to mention the projects we've got on the run...

[acchow]

Absolutely agree. Late at night in the labs in MC, it is not uncommon to hear students arguing about functional vs. OOP paradigms or the relevancy of SQL in "big data".

[simarpreet007]

I couldn't agree more!