All fair points. And I completely forgot about the x-fer threads, which, yes, by definition screams, “we made a mistake.”
Where I think this gets the most hotly debated is the state flagship vs. the small private college where, for whatever reason, the family is not getting full need at the private and it works out to be cheaper at the flagship. That’s all well and good. But it’s about at that point that the extra, “and why would anyone want to go [pick name of small private college with limited professional study options]?”. And it moves on from there. I think the subset of national universities that are the focus of this thread are the exceptions to these debates. The big school people give them a pass because of their marketability and the small school people don’t really see the debate there because they recognize those schools as also being pretty small with massive resources. It surprises a lot of people to learn Harvard has only a smidge over 5,000 UGs. That’s just a couple thousand more than Wesleyan. For people like me at least, having UT Austin and Brown in the same comparator group is a bit odd.
Do ping me the next time it comes up. You’ve developed a better pitch than have I on that topic, which is a hard one to address succinctly.
