<p>NeuroEngineer “I was just reading an article about Artificial Intelligence (I know, not exactly engineering…) and the 4ish pioneers in the field were all MIT and Stanford… I mean the kind of experiences amd knowledge you gain at a brilliant place like mit/stanford has to be worth it. If you want do something big, going to those schools is whats best i think. If you wanna be a technical enginee forever working under people and not becoming an entreprenuer or leader in the field, then of course state schools are the place for you. I am personally pretty ambitious and wanna do something cool and original and awesome that impacts the world.”</p>
<p>Okay, so you have four people as an example. Did they get their BS degrees from MIT and Stanford or are they just working there as Phds? If you look up government grants for fundamental research in CS and Robotics you will find significant funding of state schools like Ga Tech and U of Minnesota. Why does cutting edge work only register when its one of your 3 top schools? Fort that matter, why do you assume that state schools don’t generate entrepreneurs?</p>
<p>It appears to me that your mind is pretty well made up. Usually if someone has a preconceived notion they may have a tendency to mentally acknowledge only that evidence that supports their theory and disregard or downplay evidence that contradicts their assumptions. Hopefully you will be accepted to one of your top 3 schools and then be able to judge based on your own outcome whether it was worth it. At a state school I think you’ve set yourself up for less than an optimal outcome, e.g., when you say that you need super talented peers in order to really excel it tells me that you are not self motivated. Those who are self motivated make their own opportunities and you really need that characteristic to do well at a state university and especially as an entrepreneur.</p>