I went to a major US research institution and double degreed in CS and East Asian Studies (Japanese, basically). The quality of the Japanese program was life-changing for me. The quality of the CS program -- meh, I'm not unhappy with it, but neither the instruction nor the brand name was worth substantially more than the equivalent degree from a less prestigious institution.
Sevenish-years later I can guarantee you that no one who I do business with cares a lick about the name of my university. They don't ask, I don't tell. (Same with GPA, major, and specific wording of the degree, by the way. My professors and advisors carried on as if these were really important when I was in school. I actually cried when some minor academic rule looked like it was going to knock my degree from $ARBITRARY_LETTERS to $EQUALLY_ARBITRARY_LETTERS. I strongly suggest college kids have a professional mentor outside of academia in whatever industry/culture/etc they want to seek employment in, so you can figure out whether the things academia are so obsessed with actually matter at all.)
This is, obviously, influenced by my career choices. If I had done what many kids at my university did and gone into investment banking, management consulting, or the like, I would have a 4x scale replica of my diploma made so that one could not help reading the name when one entered my office.
Whoopsie. I just remembered that the YC application actually does ask for university, GPA, and major. I won't speak for pg and the gang, but I strongly suspect that these exhibit an exponential decay in saliency the longer you have been out of school.
(i.e. if you're still in school, maybe getting good grades at a good school is a useful proxy for future ability to do meaningful stuff, but if you have been out of school for seven years, having done meaningful stuff is a much better proxy for future ability to do meaningful stuff.)
After 7 years of work experience, certainly. But as students coming out right now can tell you, getting an entry level job is nigh impossible. Having the extra edge might be worth it.
The problem with CS is nobody really knows how to select students that are good at it or teach it. So there is little real difference between graduates of a top school and an average school with a few good instructors. As to networking, there are plenty of ways to network that don't cost 100,000$.
PS: Some schools still attract talent, but plenty of terrible programmers graduated from ex: MIT.
I do not attend MIT but I am a big fan of OCW videos and I still regret being rejected (probably will for life). I would love to be taught by Demaine, Leiserson et al.
I am not sure you can survive that rigorous a coursework and graduate with less-than-average skills in at least theory, systems, compilers / prog. languages (dunno if everyone there does other stuff like ML, Advanced theory courses etc).
Sevenish-years later I can guarantee you that no one who I do business with cares a lick about the name of my university. They don't ask, I don't tell. (Same with GPA, major, and specific wording of the degree, by the way. My professors and advisors carried on as if these were really important when I was in school. I actually cried when some minor academic rule looked like it was going to knock my degree from $ARBITRARY_LETTERS to $EQUALLY_ARBITRARY_LETTERS. I strongly suggest college kids have a professional mentor outside of academia in whatever industry/culture/etc they want to seek employment in, so you can figure out whether the things academia are so obsessed with actually matter at all.)
This is, obviously, influenced by my career choices. If I had done what many kids at my university did and gone into investment banking, management consulting, or the like, I would have a 4x scale replica of my diploma made so that one could not help reading the name when one entered my office.