I disagree entirely. Graduate school has nothing to do with the undergraduate curriculum. I went to a school with an amazing graduate program but I had a terrible watered down education that barely went passed Java and did not push me or many of the other students.
It's an excellent opportunity for summer research jobs and the such, but otherwise does not translate well into the lower curriculum unless you want it to.
I agree: a good graduate school can offer a good undergraduate education if you want it to. The ambition to get a good education when it's available (but not necessary) is highly desirable, no?
According to USNWR, both the UIUC and University of Texas at Austin also have top 10 undergraduate engineering programs (#5 and #10 respectively) as well.
I can't think of a top graduate program with a poor undergraduate program. And CS tends to be extremely rigorous, so I am honestly surprised that a recruiter would view a degree in CS from UTex as a non-indicator.
But I'm not trying to shoot the messenger. Perhaps UTex and Brown were selected to specifically illustrate the phenomenon here, that a highly regarded engineering school might be discounted while an Ivy league school that normally isn't associated with Computer Science would be considered a positive indicator.
It's a little hard to argue with a recruiter, they've done far more placement than I have. But I have worked (and done lots of interviews for) for a large silicon valley company, as well as for a few startups, and personally I think that a CS degree from UTex at Austin or UIUC would be very positively received.
Undergraduate curricula tends to be standardized, and nobody gets out of a top school without taking the tough courses. But you can get wiggle through an MS. But at the door... not so sure, the selection requirements (undergraduate GPA and GRE) at Berkeley were very high for any kind of admitted grad student. However, Berkeley doesn't have one of those "industrial affiliate" programs that are profit centers. However, I don't think these programs harm the universities that offer them at all - the students are almost always already employed at good companies doing interesting work, and I think the other students benefit from their presence.
The way it's worded, no public school can be a top-tier school, and since he says the value of "top tier" is the (four or more years ago) application process, there's a certain logic to that. A HS student in Texas will have a much easier time getting into UT than Stanford.
However, my experience (as a holder of a degree from a further-down-the-list university) has been that after the first job (and then even moreso after the second), the name of your undergrad university matters much less. Having real, productive work experience is itself a powerful signal—so hopefully those first jobs let you do interesting or varied enough stuff to have something good for the resume. So I don't have the network (yet!) that a Stanford or MIT grad would, but I'm not landing on discard piles either.
Funny in my part of the world, the bad ones are the private universities.
The reason being the only people that go to private universities are the ones without good notes to earn a place at the public universities, but whose parents are rich enough to pay for the university.
People with degrees from private universities are told they bought the degree.
I don't mean that everyone that goes to private universities here has bought his or her degree, but there are a few cases of famous people that went to Bocconi and well... let's say they don't need to make use of their degree. I don't know if you can read italian but this article (http://www.lettera43.it/persone/8320/il-lato-b-della-bocconi...) explains how many of the girls involved in the Berlusconi's scandal went to Bocconi and got one or even two degrees. That means either that the place is unusually full or very smart and very pretty girls or that there's something strange going on.
I think the author is claiming that the difficulty of undergraduate admissions is the important metric, not the quality of the program. UIUC and UT-Austin are tier 1 research departments, but not among the most selective of programs for undergraduates. (I realize they are extremely selective as PhD programs.)
