I’m genuinely curious about the advantages of going to MIT or any other super competitive CS college for undergrad instead of say, UMass or another less-competitive CS university.

From limited knowledge and experience at other colleges (all pretty well-ranked but not as well as MIT), it’s the prestige and graduate research which makes colleges like MIT superior. Otherwise, for most undergrads it’s like a typical college experience, but with harder courses and smarter peers, but even that is flexible (since they have access to graduate students and grad-level courses).

It’s particularly relevant today because apparently college admissions are really competitive. A lot of high schoolers are upset because they got rejected from everything but their safeties, except their safeties are like Georgia Tech, Rutgers or the UCs.