[Abby0]

MIT and CMU are some of the top computer science schools worldwide, not everyone will be able to get into them.

Also, University of Maryland (the school that the author is talking about here) is a really decent school with great faculty. So, its strange that this was the author's experience with some of the graduates.

Shouldnt the students have pursued side projects outside of school to learn more about how to apply their knowledge in real life practical example.

[hintymad]

Yeah, Maryland must offer courses on system building, just like dozens of excellent US universities. I suspect that skills of system design come with experience, and not every student can master the basics in schools. Indeed, not every student can master the basics of algorithm analysis. If we ask questions about algorithm analysis of the same difficulty level as the design questions, some students would fail miserably.