First, go to a college, not a university. The ideal place
is a teaching college that does not focus on research and
does not have grad students. They exist, and they're
awesome.
Or go to a top University. The Professors certainly care more about their research than you (it pays the bills and keeps them employed), but it's OK if you're smart. You don't need one-on-one attention. If you want to get super smart, join a research group and work on hard problems.
And if you go to the right university, you have instant credibility. Even if your goal is not to work for a megacorp (which, by the way, is trivially easy out of CMU), people will assume you know shit, which makes your path infinitely easier.
It's true that very smart people come out of all types of colleges with all kinds of backgrounds, and that there are a lot of idiots at places like MIT, Stanford, and CMU. But the intelligence density is still always going to be way higher at a top 5 school.
In short:
Stanford - Best overall for undergrads, in my limited experience. It's not that the smartest people I've met have been Stanford undergrads/alumni, but they're consistently bright (across a sample size of 10 or so).
CMU - Very good at programming. Most of the systems classes follow the "Write X from scratch" mantra, which is a great way to learn about malloc, distributed systems, kernels, etc.
MIT - Obviously a great school, and some of the smartest kids go there, but I've not been universally impressed (we're talking about rising seniors not knowing how malloc works). Still, my sample size is small.
Berkeley - I've heard that the professors there are trying to create more professors. I work with one Berkeley grad (now a PhD student at CMU) and he's pretty sharp, but doesn't have the programming background that I do.
And if you go to the right university, you have instant credibility. Even if your goal is not to work for a megacorp (which, by the way, is trivially easy out of CMU), people will assume you know shit, which makes your path infinitely easier.
It's true that very smart people come out of all types of colleges with all kinds of backgrounds, and that there are a lot of idiots at places like MIT, Stanford, and CMU. But the intelligence density is still always going to be way higher at a top 5 school.
In short:
Stanford - Best overall for undergrads, in my limited experience. It's not that the smartest people I've met have been Stanford undergrads/alumni, but they're consistently bright (across a sample size of 10 or so).
CMU - Very good at programming. Most of the systems classes follow the "Write X from scratch" mantra, which is a great way to learn about malloc, distributed systems, kernels, etc.
MIT - Obviously a great school, and some of the smartest kids go there, but I've not been universally impressed (we're talking about rising seniors not knowing how malloc works). Still, my sample size is small.
Berkeley - I've heard that the professors there are trying to create more professors. I work with one Berkeley grad (now a PhD student at CMU) and he's pretty sharp, but doesn't have the programming background that I do.