I would like to preface that I am writing with a background in tech. As a result, this post will be catered towards people in tech.
I would like to start by saying that I believe smart people will always succeed, regardless of the university they attend. I am almost certain that people who have ended up with great jobs through attending the University of Waterloo would have had a similar — if not better — experience had they gone to a different school and put in the same effort into getting a full time role or internship.
An astute reader will realize that I say the University of Waterloo is the best place to be, and not the best university. A small nuance, but especially important when you consider why University of Waterloo students end up doing great things. Yes, the University of Waterloo offers world class education, constantly ranking within the top 50 universities worldwide for subjects like Math, Computer Science, and Engineering, but if pure education is what you seek, schools such as the University of Toronto offer similar — if not better — education. I believe that the real speciality of the University of Waterloo is the environment and its co-op.
Many students in tech or tech adjacent majors often get internships in their first year. Waterloo's courses contribute very little to this. Math/CS students in their first semester take CS135, which teaches Racket, a general-purpose, multi-paradigm programming language that belongs to the Lisp and Scheme family. In CS135, the Racket and functional programming you learn is something you will probably never touch in industry at all. Math/CS students take CS136 in their second semester, which is in C. This is somewhat better as it is a language which is used in industry, but the coverage of the course is very minimal, and while it might help for interview preparations (LeetCode), I do not believe it is enough to get a job in this current job market. Students who land internships in their first year often know programming languages not taught in these classes, and at a very high level; Waterloo has no effect on this.
What I believe Waterloo does play an effect on is how hard you try to land a co-op. If you are in a co-op program, Waterloo gives you access to WaterlooWorks the term prior to your co-op term. WaterlooWorks is the official online co-op and career recruitment platform used by the University of Waterloo. WaterlooWorks is pretty good, however, first years will often have little luck in getting interviews through the WaterlooWorks job board. Job postings on WaterlooWorks consist of top startups and even FAANG companies, which almost guarantees that a certain number of Waterloo students will intern at these top companies (Waterloo famously has a saying called "Cali or Bust"). For upper years, WaterlooWorks is a very good resource. I believe that the environment of Waterloo plays an even bigger role than being in a co-op program and having access to WaterlooWorks.
Because the majority of the people around you are striving for a co-op, you too will be forced to strive for one.
At Waterloo, your "five people" are almost certainly spending their time optimizing their resumes, working on side projects on weekends, and preparing for technical interviews. When everyone in your immediate circle treats landing a good internship as the baseline expectation, that ambition becomes contagious. The environment and culture in Waterloo doesn't just encourage you to succeed but rather normalizes the extreme effort required to get there.
If foundational classes like CS135 and CS136 aren't teaching students the knowledge needed for these internships, how do students actually land them? The answer comes down to this exact environment and culture at Waterloo. To stand out, you are forced to build outside of the classroom. Rather than just studying for exams, you spend your time attending hackathons and working on projects to try and solve problems that you notice.
To bring it all back to my original point: you don't attend the University of Waterloo purely for the lectures. You go for the culture and environment. Never in my life have I been surrounded by as many smart, high-achieving people as I was when I first came to Waterloo. This is why the University of Waterloo isn't just a great university, it's the best place to be.