Definitely not; the schools just had very different student body profiles. And the big state school I went to for undergrad wasn't a bad school, it just wasn't very challenging because the student body was so diverse in terms of background / intelligence. IMO that caused a lot of the students to slack off, and the school had a "party" culture as a result. Half my high school classmates went there, so I had a built-in friend network already.
Contrast with the undergrads at my grad school (I did a bunch of hackathons and pitch competitions with the undergrads, so I worked with quite a few of them), nearly all of whom were the smartest kid in their high school. Some were pricks, some were more humble, but god damn, every single one of those kids was ambitious.
Contrast with the undergrads at my grad school (I did a bunch of hackathons and pitch competitions with the undergrads, so I worked with quite a few of them), nearly all of whom were the smartest kid in their high school. Some were pricks, some were more humble, but god damn, every single one of those kids was ambitious.