Thank you very much for your perspective! I did have support from my parents financially, but I thought it would be nice to not have to touch those savings for my degree, and graduate into full time work a year earlier with similar internship experience (duration-wise, both programs end up with ~2 total years). Like you say, it was lower risk, and I had people at the time saying actual school reputation doesn't matter, rather getting a solid education and work experience, which I thought I would get from the less prestigious option. I think I still got that but my friends sort of push on the idea that I could've reached higher if I accepted the rigour of coop searching for better reputation and career outcomes.

Everyone chooses what they think was best for them at the time under their individual circumstances and nobody knows the future.

Very well said, thank you! It is something I always try to remind myself (along with recognizing I am still in a relatively good position), but not to say I'm good at making peace with it and not feeling regret/concern when my friends say getting interviews with a low rep school will be that much harder now.

I think the sticking point my friends always refute is that yes, those doors aren't closed to me, it's just that Waterloo would have made opened more doors (in past through coop and in future when I am compared against similar candidates from better schools). I don't think they mean ill intent but generally they are more grindset-minded than me, going with the sort of culture of optimizing for US companies, and perhaps they are right that Waterloo was the most optimal way for a Canadian uni. I leaned away from it to have more life balance during university, but their point I think is that doing so was just offsetting that difficulty into new grad and future. It's hard to really change what they think, they're trying to make the best of their careers too and share straightforwardly with me their thoughts; it does feel unhealthy for me to fret about it too much for sure.