Of course OP's experience is valid, but I just want to say, this was not my experience and not the experience of many founders I know who participated.

Last year thousands upon thousands of folks were accidentally accepted into the program, and some things had to change along the way to accommodate that. A syllabus designed for a couple hundred people isn't going to scale to 15,000 without some tweaks.

There's not really a downside to joining startup school. You can leave at any time, if it's not beneficial to your company.

If you're early-stage and looking for a cohort of peers to help you make more progress than you would on your own, I would recommend giving Startup School a shot. It costs nothing, the minimum time commitment is almost zero, and it looks like there's going to be a great community of folks in this batch.