> There really are good reasons for such a choice. The schools that are so famous for their top-end research are achieving that research success by having those

> There really are good reasons for such a choice. The schools that are so famous for their top-end research are achieving that research success by having those elite professors doing research, and that comes at the expense of teaching. Going to a merely "most selective" school rather than "Ivy Plus" is an decent solution to that problem. One of the points of going to good research universities is to immerse yourself in exactly that environment: research. Good students probably don't need good teachers to learn. The reason to go to a top research university is to get involved in exactly that research. Especially in computer science and engineering, this is part of the pipeline to the really interesting jobs in industry. I completely missed this when I was in school, and I regret it.