Also, you get as much as you put in. I’ve had plenty of awful professors but found ways to study in my own time, do my own projects and read papers on top of the curriculum I was learning. You can’t expect to passively receive the best possible education by top notch teachers, especially in research institutions.

Lastly, your first sentence neatly proves my point that elite/“top 2” programs are more about signaling and working for a FAANG. Not everyone judges the worth of their career by salary or proximity to a FAANG, and I would consider it extremely wasteful and sad if someone considered the biggest benefit of a top tier CS education to be landing a FAANG job.