If I had to do it all over again. I'd pick a place where there's a good state school with attractive girls and good pick-up basketball/soccer games and a good a

If I had to do it all over again. I'd pick a place where there's a good state school with attractive girls and good pick-up basketball/soccer games and a good academic school with relatively open campus. I'd then find a PT job doing programming and go to lectures at good academic school and then on weekends and in afternoon go to state school for parties and sports for well rounded education in theoretical CS, professional programming and personal liberal arts (not talking about the Hegelian dialectics, but how to hold you liquor, how talk to girls, how to drive and finish at the hoop, and budgeting and saving on your personal retirement plan/nest egg early). But since youth is wasted on the young, I say Stanford. Since the youth craves some kind of redemption of respect but nowadays it seems like old East Coast prestige is out of style, there's still plenty of prestige at Stanford but you also get to play the 'SV rebel card' by going to Stanford, so you'll feel very secure and not have any "buyer's remorse".