The university experience is whatever people choose to make of it. The people who complain most loudly about how college was a waste for them tend to be people who took no initiative of their own and expected to simply be spit out of some pipeline of courses into a top tier job. OP is clearly not one of those people, and has an internally driven passion for learning, pursued of their volition. That doesn't mean OP is somehow beyond college, it means they are an excelent candidate for it.

The combination of breadth and depth of knowledge and experience available at universities is unmatched anywhere in the world. OP may find themselves more interested in developing neural interfaces, working on processor hardware architectures, designing next generation microscopy systems for biology, or a hundred other things. It's true that there are other entry points into those areas that don't involve being on a campus, but a good university provides efficient entry points into all of them. This is especially true for students who set up independent study courses for themselves, start/run student organizations, talk to professors about their research, and seek out research and project opportunities during summers.

I think college is most useful to people who don't know what they want to do. I complain about college _because_ I took initiative beforehand.

I knew exactly the job & company I wanted to work for way before college, so I had learned everything relevant to that goal before I joined. From my perspective, I spent 3 years learning stuff I didn't want, or paying to be taught stuff I'd already learned on my own. Both left a sour taste in my mouth.

I graduated into exactly the job & company I wanted from the start. I give college zero credit for that. Well, maybe a little bit for getting past the "candidate has a degree" hiring checkbox, but I often question the value of that. 3 years of my life. Ugh. I was watching the clock the whole time.

If you want to make lifelong friends and spend countless hours programming and working together in all sorts of things, for fun and/or profit, go to University. I went and started https://makersupv.com/ with some friends, which could only happen within university-life context.

The synergy of having hundreds of like-minded people working towards similar goals but each with a different specialization/interest, all while having energy and free time, is difficult to undermine.