> Why is it so important to go to a school like Cornell, CMU, or UPenn?
Colleges spend a lot of time and money on selecting the smartest students, so companies don't have to. Screening is quite expensive, and anecdotally, people from prestigious universities generally pass interviews at a much higher rate.
Being around smarter and more ambitious people makes you smarter as well. I feel that has a lot more impact than faculty. My top CS school had some senile tenured professors who were barely comprehensible, so we had to learn a lot from each other.
I think you'd find plenty of smart and ambitious students at your local community and state colleges. Yes, it might be harder to find them, but they're definitely there.
But yeah, not saying that there aren't major advantages to going to a school like Cornell or CMU. Just that these schools are outrageously expensive, inequitable and we have some power to relax their grip on our higher education system by asserting that yes, we can be smart, educated and worthy people (and engineers!) even if we go to more "low-brow" schools.
Colleges spend a lot of time and money on selecting the smartest students, so companies don't have to. Screening is quite expensive, and anecdotally, people from prestigious universities generally pass interviews at a much higher rate.
Being around smarter and more ambitious people makes you smarter as well. I feel that has a lot more impact than faculty. My top CS school had some senile tenured professors who were barely comprehensible, so we had to learn a lot from each other.