I have an undergrad from a large, anonymous state school, and a masters (earned in 1993) from a smaller, regionally prestigious private engineering school. I h

I have an undergrad from a large, anonymous state school, and a masters (earned in 1993) from a smaller, regionally prestigious private engineering school. I honestly don't believe that I learned anything useful when getting my MS. The upper level undergrad courses that I took at the state school were mixed grad/undergrad, and covered far more material than the ones at my grad school. I sailed through all the coursework because it was an easier version of the courses I'd previously taken. I applied and was accepted to the PhD program at the school because I thought I wanted to study AI (in the early 90s). I was lucky enough to get a fellowship, so I took an overload of coursework. After 2 semesters, I decided that I was much more interested in systems, and was at the wrong school. So I decided to leave with an MS and did a project over the summer and left. All that year really did was to pad my resume a bit and put a better known school at the top of it. I think it I may have gotten a marginally higher salary at one of my first employers because of that. I'm still thankful for the fellowship, and the knowledge that getting my MS cost me almost nothing beyond delaying my career by a year.