I find people from research institutions are significantly more likely to misunderstand the fundamentals. Statistics for example is based on very specific assumptions and it’s really important to understand what they are to avoid making huge mistakes.

There’s this unfortunate idea that tests are there for the school rather than the student. Avoiding misunderstanding is critical and getting something wrong is one way to discover them. But that’s really inefficient, the basic question and answers with a professor are why your not simply reading from a textbook or watching a YouTube video.

That said, if you went to a horrible collage I can see why you would think YouTube was just as good and doing research was the real secret to learning.

Strongly disagree with this for CS. At top universities, you’re paying for access to similarly interested/capable students and top internship programs. Having done undergrad research, it was both underwhelming and worse experience than my friends who did internships at FAANG.

I think GPs perspective is not wrong, but assumes (or maybe hopes) that students are at least considering graduate+ level education. like you suggest, I think this is mostly not true of undergrad cs students. if you have no intention of going to grad school, industry internships are a much better use of time outside of class. as a bonus, the internship is a lot more likely to pay enough that you can actually pay bills while in school.

> (or maybe hopes) that students are at least considering graduate+ level education.

I'm not necessarily assuming that. I think there seems to be an assumption here that the choice is research or internship, but not both. That is not the case. Students do research with me during a typical semester, and when they are done the school year, they often go and get industry internships over the summer at top companies around the world. We train them to pass the Google-style whiteboard coding interviews; our students are very prepared for those. I don't know of any students who do internships during the school year. Most of my students who do research with me do not go on to do graduate studies.

I guess I'm just saying there's an opportunity cost to doing research in undergrad. at the school I attended, it was pretty common for students to have part-time internships during the semester. these were not google-tier companies, but rather local companies that liked hiring from that particular school. the time expectation (and pay) made it a good alternative to a campus job. that's what I did, and I got a fairly good offer from one of the places where I interned. once I got involved in hiring there, I found that the number one criterion for new grads was quantity/quality of internships. research was irrelevant unless it happened to be directly relevant to the business, and was still probably no better than having one more solid internship on the resume.

maybe if you're the kind of undergrad that has a good shot at google straight out of college, this doesn't make as much sense. I guess if you do two summer internships at FAANGs, you already look really good and may as well diversify your experience. my guess is that does not apply to the vast majority of cs majors that are just in it to get a decent job.

I'll have to defer to your experience on undergrad research though. what do you see as the value add from doing research as a student who has no intention of continuing school after undergrad?