The quan . And thank god it did . <| sep |> From my experience , if you ' re planning to go to graduate school , the choice of undergraduate institution is less about prestige than it is facilities and affordability . I can ' t speak to CompSci in particular , but of my graduate cohort , about half went to elite undergraduate schools and the rest of us myself included went to an affordable , local state school . I didn ' t notice any real difference in preparation , except that a lot of peers who went to R 1 schools as undergraduates had more highend research experience , but less daytoday in lab research experience . The other thing to keep in mind is how undergraduate debt effects your future options . Having a huge student loan debt means you can ' t necessarily take a postdoctoral training position that doesn ' t pay well , or afford as easily travel and training for networking while in grad school . My wife and I entered grad school with zero debt , and it was hugely beneficial both while in grad school and now that we ' re out .