<p>There's a difference between a really big school (Berkeley, Mich.) and a truly gigantic one (Texas). I've known people who've graduated from all 4 of these places, and only Cornell makes much of an effort to focus on undergrad teaching. Texas would be by far the worst in that capacity. Have you considered Northwestern?</p>
<p>Northwestern is pretty low on the ranking of engineering universities which is why i did not consider it.</p>
<p>There seems to be a lot of talk on this site about the quality of specific departments at colleges. From my experience, at the undergrad level, the quality of specific departments is not anywhere near as important a consideration as it is at the graduate level. There are several reasons for this: you might change majors once you get there; the stuff undergrads are taught is not sufficiently advanced that big-name professors are going to be necessarily better than merely excellent ones, especially if the big-name guy teaches large classes. If you were learning to swim, it would be better to have more individualized instruction from a very solid and experienced teacher than to be in a huge class taught by a famous Olympic swimming coach who's mostly concerned with his Olympic swimmers (grad students); and years down the road, which college you went to is probably going to mean more to employers than which department you went to. For example, the University of Pittsburgh has one of the top philosophy departments in the world--easily on par with most of the Ivies. But if someone chose Pittsburgh over, say, Brown, because they had a slightly better philosophy department, he'd be trading a lifetime of having a far-less-prominent alma mater for the benefit of having spent 4 years with slightly more-prominent philosophy professors. </p>
<p>I may be wrong, but what I'm proposing is that you might be better off in the long run going to a great UNIVERSITY like Northwestern, even if some specific DEPARTMENTS rank a bit lower than at a fine-but-not-great (especially for undergrads) school like Texas.</p>
<p>I think TourGuide hit it on the head.</p>
<p>Thanks, Merlin. It's nice to have someone give me a thumb's up on this site, rather than the other finger I usually get in response to my posts.</p>
<p>Sorry, with my U of Pittsburgh example, I meant to say "trading a lifetime of having a far-MORE-prominent alma mater for 4 years with slightly more-prominent philosophy professors."</p>
<p>UT-Austin is awesome. Only drawback is a tiny campus with tons of students. Tends to be very liberal. Best live music anywhere. Beautiful scenery smack dab in the Hill Country. Plenty of cool little towns to escape to.</p>
<p>Both Ithaca and Cornell are very exciting and lively places, yo, and just as engaging. It's a relatively small place, but Cornell takes up a lot of Ithaca and it's still respectably large.</p>