just wanted to mention that most of my classes were under 100 people this year. my chem class was actually 34 people, toxicology ~30. my last big class was for E&M for physics, and that really stunk.

Based on my experience, I say public school because you get diversity in every way (okay, maybe not so much geographically) as opposed to upper-middle-class-abercrombie and you learn so much by interacting w/ different people. Since they’re big you have a million options as far as courses, clubs and other interests go letting you be whoever.

Then again, sometimes being a number and having 1000+ student classes and every class curved to a 67-71% sort of sucks

the higher ranked public schools have it all–good academics, good athletics, and good resources; there are tons of student groups (lots of manpower) and professors for each field… we have 19 schools.

maybe its just that ann arbor is a liberal haven, but the flood of students and activists gives the school a good, justice-centered atmosphere.

i don’t think the school is too big–i run into people all the time, even ones from orientation. a newly met acquaintance and i were just saying what a small world it was in ann arbor.

so yeah–public all the way!

size is a huge issue - SUNYs have more options since they have liberal arts components (geneseo, etc.), but most public schools are HUGE. i think if you’re the type of person who’d just get lost in that, then maybe a small liberal arts school is better. on the other hand, 4-year liberal arts colleges often lack the resources that schools with graduate education have (and they’re often in the middle of nowhere… and they can be really small, so everyone knows everyone else’s business). so my personal preference was liberal arts college within broader university.

(and sometimes private schools give good enough financial aid that if you’re in the right brackets, you pay less than if you went to a public school, esp. out of state. but your athletics usually aren’t so good.)