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Live your life in such an exemplary fashion that your friend is naturally motivated to ask, “Hey! The way you live is inspirational to me. What makes you that way?”Of course, this would require not trying to persuade your friend, or anyone else, to go to church. Being bugged to attend a church is not particularly inspirational. Would you be inspired if your friend said, “Hey! The way you live is deficient. You should attend this weekly event I attend to change your beliefs.” If you wouldn't appreciate that invitation, don't extend it to others.

Where do you think you’d be happiest living for the next four years: Austin, Berkeley, Los Angeles, or Atlanta?If you think you’d be happiest in Austin, you should attend UT Austin.If you think you’d be happiest in Berkeley, you should attend UC Berkeley.If you think you’d be happiest in Los Angeles, you should attend UCLA.If you think you’d be happiest in Atlanta, you should attend Georgia Tech.Trying to optimize for other things like prestige or career exposure is utterly pointless. All four schools have fantastic computer science programs. All four schools have faculty who are the best in the world in their subfield. All four schools have strong connections to industry. All four schools send students to top-10 PhD programs.There are no bad choices here; at most, some choices are worse for you than others.

[A2A]I do not believe there are any conferences that all computer scientists should attend.My colleagues who think of STOC and FOCS as their homes might disagree with me, but I don’t even think there are conferences that all theoretical computer scientists should attend.If you’re a computer science researcher, you should regularly attend conferences in your own research specialities, however you define those. On the one hand, you want to present your research to the audience most likely to understand, critique, appreciate, apply, and extend it. On the other hand, you want to put yourself in front of research that you’re most likely to understand, critique, appreciate, apply, and extend. More importantly, you want to stay connected with the communities that share your research interests and values, because that is where you are most likely to find good collaborators and mentors.But different people have different research interests, and belong to different research communities, and so different conferences will serve them best. Computer science is far too large and diverse for any single venue to be useful for everyone.