As someone who got to experience CS education at Columbia and Queens College I think the main reason for this is the fact that CUNYs are commuter schools. Most

As someone who got to experience CS education at Columbia and Queens College I think the main reason for this is the fact that CUNYs are commuter schools. Most people at Queens College grew up in Queens, have plenty of family and friends in the area and only step on campus when they have class. On the other hand, at Columbia most freshmen come in not knowing anyone and have no option but to go out and meet other students, join clubs and get involved in their departments. Now you have a bunch of brilliant CS majors, some of whom have been programming since the age of 5, spending most of their time together and learning from each other. The ones who are not up to speed usually catch up in a semester or 2. I've seen plenty of new student come into the Fall hackNY not knowing what Git is and then using node.js and angular few months later at the Spring hackathon. I'd bet most CS students at Queens College, like a good portion of incoming freshmen at Columbia, don't even know what a hackathon is. There's no ADI at QC, no workshops, no info sessions from top companies, no hackathons and in most cases not even research positions.