Halcyon, posts like yours above could be more helpful if they were a little less biased, and paid a little more attention to all of the info. already discussed here.
I too have lived in Massachusetts. I certainly don’t have anything against the state, nor its institutions. If you would read upthread, you would realize I was reponding to other posts about the college consortium, its structure and experience for those who participate.
The OP, as I will state for the fourth time in this thread now, would like to attend graduate school in astronomy and / or astrophysics. That is not an easy path, and as I have some experience with departments in the natural sciences, I felt it useful for him to attend the program with the greatest strength in graduate placement. I do believe (given current choices) I am correct in stating that is Stony Brook for these fields.
If somebody proves otherwise, then I am happy to desist. You should also have read upthread that your ROI article lists another of the OP’s potential schools, UW-Seattle, as a greater ROI on what I presume to be an undergraduate physics degree (and how they would calculate and scale this metric, I have no idea). I can say this metric may not apply very well to the OP, as he intends on going to graduate school.
It is a nice telescope that UMass has built with the Mexican insitute as partner. It is this, precisely, and not one of many, many other types of scopes and observatories in current use:
“If we talk only of single dish, steerable, millimeter-wavelength telescopes, then the LMT is the world’s largest.”
It is not THE LARGEST SINGLE TELESCOPE IN THE WORLD by any means other than stated above. If, perchance, the UMass facilities end up giving the OP a greater chance of achieveing his goals than the other considerations discussed, then I will happily recommend UMass to him.
Until we hear again from the OP, I think I’ve said my piece here.