One exception at least. One of my fraternity brothers at RPI came to beautiful Troy, NY when he had the option of MIT.

There really are good reasons for such a choice. The schools that are so famous for their top-end research are achieving that research success by having those elite professors doing research, and that comes at the expense of teaching. Going to a merely "most selective" school rather than "Ivy Plus" is an decent solution to that problem.

(of course, there are other reasons to not go to RPI, but that's a different conversation)

EDIT: I just noticed that you referenced RPI as "slightly more selective". At the time I was there (mid-80s) it was ranked as most selective. I'm aware that its reputation has slipped a bit. While it's not that big a deal to me, as my 30 years experience outweighs all that, I wonder what effect changing reputation has on past students.

One of the points of going to good research universities is to immerse yourself in exactly that environment: research. Good students probably don't need good teachers to learn. The reason to go to a top research university is to get involved in exactly that research. Especially in computer science and engineering, this is part of the pipeline to the really interesting jobs in industry.

I completely missed this when I was in school, and I regret it.

There's no guarantee that the less selective schools are any better at teaching. From what I've seen CMU and Stanford both had smaller class sizes and better teachers than RPI, but that was just from quick touring.

There are some schools with a strong focus on teaching (Harvey Mudd), but that seems to be unusual. I think in most cases if you get into a super selective school you should go if you can.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/where-great-research-meets-grea...

Can't get behind the paywall now, but it was a lot in line with your arguments.

I had professors at my school that taught their pet research topics. They all sucked at teaching, partly because their research areas were utterly irrelevant for undergrads who were still struggling to learn programming. RDF, anyone?

The best profs were the ones who had been working developers in industry. They found ways to make the classes engaging and fun, vs just lifelessly reading their notes out loud (often in impenetrable accents).

1. Actually know something about, and be interested in, what they are teaching.

2. Being able to explain the subject without making a complete hash of it.

3. Being able to explain the subject without leaving me comotose in my desk-thing.

Extra credit for including tips and tricks that don't get covered in textbooks and are only known to people involved in the field. Plus, background and amusing stories about how the goofy nomenclature and such got the way it is.

On the other hand, when and where I was an undergraduate, if you were "still struggling to learn programming" after the first couple of semesters of programming and data structures (taught by aforementioned "CS education" people), then you were pretty thoroughly hosed. (There were, however, 1-course hour classes in individual programming languages, if you couldn't pick up those yourself.)

Mathematical logic class taught by logician? Awesome

Automata class taught by expert in complexity theory? Fantastic

Rudin class taught by PDEs expert - amazing

The worst class I had was an introductory algorithms course taught by someone who specialized in teaching.

Early on in my career I'd get questioned about my CS degree from Tufts, and I'd jokingly mention "I'd gotten into CMU SCS, but I preferred to be a well rounded individual. I can send you the acceptance letter if you'd like."

I think people choose schools for all manner of reasons.

In retrospect, I would have been better off applying to UIUC, Purdue, or CMU, but quite a lot of the decisions I made when young would have turned out differently if I knew then what I know now.

It’s a pretty hostile environment for many people.

I admit I'm heavily biased, but I'd say it is demanding. If universally demanding excellence is 'hostile,' then I guess I can agree with you.

That is literally the diversity angle.

This is not something any diversity program I know of in the big companies is trying to address.

A person with a family issue probably still has a family issue incompatible with working for a corporation across the country.

Ever think their process of selecting unencumbered elitists might be by design and super effective?

Probably? That seems to be an expansive assumption, to be charitable.

Very much a diversity issue.

Now, awareness of this fact may be not widespread enough, skewing the applicant pool toward the outcome.you describe because of perceived cost, but it's much more likely that a student wouldn't be able to afford a public college than an elite private one.

They usually weasel word the scope of their generosity, treat loans as gifts, etc.

The sticker price is always negotiable, but state schools are usually ahead.

Since I personally experienced it, I'm pretty sure it's not.

Then you should look at the actual university policies outlined on their website. At top of line elite schools (Stanford, Princeton level), if your family income <$65-75K, both tuition and housing are free, and <$125K tuition is free.

I know for a fact that state schools like UC Berkeley and UCLA aren't that generous with housing.

>> Just look at the make up of study body at the top 5 schools.

Students from wealthier backgrounds tend to have more access to academic and educational resources and are thus more qualified and more likely to be admitted.

Not a judgement suggesting that a less fortunate child would not succeed in a similar environment; many of them just don't have one.

The people with some means (aka the "middle class") can stretch their budget to afford state school.

Most states also have transfer programs that let you go from a 2yr at a CC into the equivalent 4yr at state school which takes a huge chunk out of the cost.

I wonder if people realize how rare it is to even understand these things. If you don't have people in your family who went to college you are unlikely to be initiated into all this. If you do have a lot of people in your family who went to college, that's a serious leg up.

Now I work in a fancy startup where everyone went to Stanford, MIT, Harvard. It's a very weird feeling.

Absolutely. The number 1 reason I'm in tech is that my dad was a programmer. The reason he's in tech is that his dad was high enough up at an insurance company to swing my dad a job back when computers were new and nobody knew what to do with them. And that probably worked out because the generation before that was reasonably well off due to some lucky choices.

But I still grew up with little idea how to play the elite educational game. My family valued learning a great deal, but the jockeying for social advantage was never given much consideration. It's a very specific set of knowledge and skills.

The assumption that it's 'obvious' that knowledge of how the system works is widespread is just wrong. It's only recently that I clued in to how the industry works, if I had all this knowledge handy years ago, if somebody told me, I don't know what position I would be in right now.

State school was free with financial, extrapolating my financial aid package I would have graduated from the top choice with ~$60,000 debt.

I didn't understand the prestige differential because literally everyone I knew at best went to that state school. One of my high school teachers even told our class that we should not aim higher than the state school, because everyone who ended up going somewhere better flunked out and at best eventually graduating from the state school. At least he was telling us a state school was achievable?

I started high school at 15 and it didn't even cross my mind (and would not have been financially possible) to look for one outside of my town, while I had a reasonable one 5 min walk away from my place. There was one school known to be the top in the state, in a big city 50 km away, but it had a reputation of people going on meth to be able to keep studying 24/7 - not so great.

Then I started the local university at 18 - I happened to go to CS because I didn't see anything matching my skills better, but I didn't even write a line of C before that (did a bit of webdev and PHP though). No one in my family and none of my friends had anything to do with CS before me.

Since then I moved country twice for study/work, but I still don't see myself changing country or even state back then at 18. (At that time, I barely started having fixed internet connection at home, didn't even know something like MIT exists, and what's all the fuss about Silicon Valley).

No idea.

I can appreciate now that these schools offer stellar educational opportunity in contrast with many others. It's just that this should still be seen in the context that a person attends for a brief time when they're young and that perhaps it's not the be-all and end-all of intellectual ability that cultural attitudes (especially seemingly here in New England) might suggest.