Yep, I attended a lower-ranked state school for an undergrad in CS and had a wonderful experience. Lots of positive interactions with faculty in CS and math. My

Yep, I attended a lower-ranked state school for an undergrad in CS and had a wonderful experience. Lots of positive interactions with faculty in CS and math. My undergrad school was also attended by a large population of highly motivated students for historical reasons. I stumbled into this school almost by accident and was really happy with my student peer group because most were quite ambitious. I also then went to a well-known and ranked R1 university for grad school. I didn't enjoy it very much but also didn't match well with an advisor out of the gate. That colored my experience significantly and in hindsight was really mostly my fault. Oddly enough, I returned to this school and work a somewhat hybrid staff/research software engineer job and have been here for more than a decade. Go figure.