I don't know if you're wrong or right, but I'll give a contrarian view cause it may actually help you (instead of just nodding in agreement). Here goes:

Make sure you've decided not to go the YC route because you're afraid of responsibilities it brings. Your first reaction may be - "BS!". But humans are really good at coming up with logical explanations not to do something when they're afraid, eg walking up to a hot girl in a bar :)

What responsibilities? Well running a "funded" startup means failure is harder, you are committed to more employees, investors counting on you, and the whole startup ecosystem waiting for you to hit it big or fail. There's more pressure. By adding focus to your life, like saying you'll be an NBA player, you've limited your options and failure now has a much higher probability. College is a safety net.

I've started my first business in my last year of uni (DotHomes.com), raised multiple rounds of funding before achieving a small exit and have learned tremendous amounts. I've barely learned anything useful at uni though (and I went to one of the best). If I was to do it again - I would start that business before going to uni (something I considered at the time) because had I been at least 2 years earlier into my market - my chances would be a LOT higher. (eg at the time barely anyone did SEO in that space, by the time I launched getting traction was 3x as hard). Things have worked out alright tho, I've been accepted into YC since, working on post.fm, but it doesn't mean it was the optimal choice.

Success is more a function of being in the right place at the right time. Smart people are those that are able to establish what that place will be TOMORROW, and move there. It seems like now the right place to be is YC / Silicon Valley. If you believe bootstrapping is a better approach to building a startup - convince your friends of it, and do it at YC. imo that's not an excuse.

Nobody forces you to raise lots of money there, you could still bootstrap if you want to, but life is a race against time. Industries, like economies, move in waves / cycles / trends. Steve Jobs was "lucky" to ride the PC trend, had he decided to do that 10 years later - he may have been too late, no matter how genius. Perhaps the Google guys could have done something else, but the search opportunity window would have closed, and that other thing would probably be not as big.

I don't believe this "startup ecosystem" will be around forever for you to pursue. Nothing is. We still live in a world where markets dictate the next boom or bust. I've had a major exit fall apart because of the 2008 market crash. My point is - the world doesn't stand still. Like in poker there are times when you have to go all in if you want to be one of the best. Your friends went all in. You didn't. I bet Paul appreciated the fact that they were persistent. At this point in the startup wave - they've made a sensible decision because they've got a good hand (if YC accepted them). Maybe your time will come and you may have a good hand in the future as well, maybe not. But making things harder for yourself isn't a recipe for success. It's a recipe for geeks who like to tinker with things without finishing them (and god knows I've done that too many times) because they enjoy the process too much.

In fact bootstrapping is just that - giving yourself a longer runway to do the stuff you love. You probably don't love hiring, managing, presenting, pitching, etc - all the stuff that CEOs and not developers have to do. Once you have a product/market fit the only reason NOT to pour gasoline on your fire is if gasoline is too expensive. Right now that's not the case.

The risk / reward for your friends is now very good. Even if they don't hit a homerun - they'd have learned so much doing it, it's worth infinitely more than uni. Life is short, be bold, you have nothing to loose, and you can probably always go back to college. If you never find the courage to talk to a chick that's a "10" - you'll never be dating one. And as years pass, you only get older and more conservative.

This will probably generate lots of downvotes, but I thought I'd rather give you the other side of the coin just in case you're not being honest with yourself. Of course it's a lifestyle choice and there's no right or wrong, nor am I remotely the expert. But I'd give anything to be 10 years younger right now.