Maybe they're pushing people to get the best school for their major.

I think going to Stanford for CS will open more doors than going to Oregon State. There is a significant networking aspect to these top schools as well. I see it very clearly with my friends who went to CalTech and Stanford.

It's probably not a coincidence that many (most?) of my peers in the bay area are people who graduated from top schools and/or programs.

> I think going to Stanford for CS will open more doors than going to Oregon State.

This concept stops being applicable the minute you get out of the HYPS tier of colleges. If you're cut out to go to HYPS and want to work in finance or top-tier consulting, then you should go. I understand the situation is similar these days with FANG companies. Once you're outside that tiny range of schools, save your money and go to the best in-state school you can get into.

You don't have to be in finance either. The people I'm mentioning are all in software.

Turns out - some of these graduating classes from these prestigious colleges end up running a lot of the bay area. It's not a diverse educational background.

OSU has quite a bit to offer that can jumpstart a CS career, like the OSU Open Source Lab: http://osuosl.org

Meanwhile, not really sure I think of Stanford as a CS school, unlike MIT & similar.

"Top tier CS" school is pure marketing. Data structures and algorithms don't change based on geography or the amount of money you pay a school.

The quality of professors, lectures, and general atmosphere definitely do.

Stanford CS is tied for #1 with Berkeley CMU and MIT

Berkely (BSD), MIT (of MIT license fame) & CMU (Sphinx) have a history of notable software that has enabled computing for decades, most HN users can name software developed by either institution.

Stanford doesn't have that cache, despite what US News & World might say. US News & World rankings tend to be fairly subjective, look at their top 15 cities.

Edit: CS School Rankings for those interested: https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-science-sch...

Are you seriously saying Stanford doesn't have the same cache as Berkeley, MIT, or CMU in CS because you couldn't name something invented from Stanford?

How about number of Turing laureates? Stanford has the most for alumni + faculty, and comes second if you only count alumni (to Berkeley), and comes second if you just count long-term faculty (to MIT), and comes first for short-term faculty.[0]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Turing_Award_laureates...

I mean, you could look at Google, Yahoo, SnapChat, VMWare, Sun, and Cisco as "interesting software invented at Stanford". Not to mention TAOCP and TeX. Only difference is that Stanford alums tend to get rich off their inventions because they don't bother to share the source code (usually; Knuth is an exception) while Berkeley & MIT have more of a history of public-domain contributions.

I think this is an uncomfortable truth for many people. People don’t like to admit that their performance at the time they got admitted to college is a reflection of their status and future ability but it unfortunately is.