We are lucky in this country to have a wide variety of choices for higher education and not so lucky that the cost of attendance, even at public universities, is extremely high, sometimes out of reach. Not only do our children have to search carefully for the best possible experience, we, as parents have to search for the place we can afford to send them. Most of us are not in a position to write off one set of schools vs. another. Nor should we. Every child is different and every family’s finances are different.
That being said, like @cypresspat, I have a certain bias based on my own experiences. I went to a competitive SUNY (I’m dating myself by saying that it was the most competitive public institution in the US at the time I went) where, as a very quiet and awkward young person, I was totally lost. Everyone seemed to know each other before they even reached the campus. The people I knew from high school were the ones I was trying to escape. (It’s hard to meet people from all over the world when your school accepts the vast majority of its students from within its own state.)
There was no real advising or guidance and I felt as if I was simply in high school 2.0. Sure, there were some smart kids around me but my general sense of the place was that the cohort was lower than the kids I’d had with me in AP classes in high school. Far from opening up a new world, this felt extremely limiting. I really disliked my college years. Since then, I have talked to others who had very different experiences and loved their time at SUNY so again and again, over the years, I tried to rein in my bias.
When my children’s time came to look at college, my husband and I encouraged them to look at a variety of schools. We have relatives and friends who are passionate supporters of lots of schools, both public and private. I have a good friend who was very similar to me, ended up at SUNY, and just by luck was advised to enter a small major that gave her a very personalized enriched experience. I recognized that not everyone had my experience at a state school. In other words, we were looking at fit over public/private per se but we were also prepared to sacrifice for their educations and we counted ourselves extremely blessed to be able to make that choice.
One concern was that our state schools, while highly regarded, require kids to choose a major before even being enrolled and there is very little flexibility to change that path after starting. We did not want them to be in a place where getting required classes would be difficult or where they would be treated as numbers rather than people. My youngest, who is not an assertive sort, needed a place where she would find guidance and excellent advising. They were not interested in heading for schools that would place them way at the top of the cohort, all three wanted real peers. Not a single one of my girls is motivated by GPA over learning. In fact, I’d say my eldest is almost anti-GPA, lol, if that’s such a thing. Ironically, they all did really well in college. And please don’t misunderstand, in no way am I saying that they thought they were too good for state schools. I’m only saying that public or private, they wanted schools where they would fit with the mission and vibe of the school. State schools that select from a broad swath of kids from all over the country like Michigan were high on at least one of their lists. Schools that select overwhelmingly from their own state probably would not have worked as well.
I don’t know how they would have done at a larger, state university. All I can say is that they all thrived at the schools they chose. My quiet youngest worked one-on-one with a professor to develop and complete her thesis and acknowledges that this was a great facet of her education. This was required for her major; it was not something she had to seek out or compete for. In all likelihood, this particular thesis and area of study would not have been available to her at our state universities. She also developed very close relationships with a very strong set of peers as they worked on p-sets together; collaboration was emphasized. Those collaborations grew into friendships that will go well beyond the college years.
Sorry this ended up so long. Essentially it goes back to my first paragraph. Different kids have different needs and different families have different priorities and different means.