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[quote=Anonymous]I made a very similar decision (between a SLAC ranked in the 20s and a flagship public university) and chose t be the bigger fish. At the outset, the ONLY reason I made this choice was because the two cost exactly the same. In this day and age, you do have to consider loans first, and if there's a big disparity in aid, go with the cheaper school.

That said, here are the plusses and minuses:

PLUS:  
- Small classes, individualized instruction
- Easy to navigate administrative stuff, access amenities like the gym, etc. Very little stress in managing life. 
- Get to know professors and admins
- Graduated top of class and got a lot of help getting a post-grad Fulbright 
- More than sufficient range of majors and classes
- Not intimidating
- Could choose a culture that suited me - in my case, it was a "hippy" school with no greek/athletics influence, that promoted study abroad and internationalism. 
- the relatively lower prestige ranking/name recognition has never hurt me at all. Still went to a top Ivy for law school, good jobs, etc.

MINUSES:
- honestly, the students, on average, were much less motivated and academically focused than I was. Some very smart people, but many slackers. However, I did notice that they started to get more on top of things towards our junior and senior year. But I definitely felt at the top of the class and bored, whereas I know I would have been more challenged at more selective schools.
- culture was a little one-dimensional because of the size of school
- no graduate depts meant less access to truly cutting edge stuff.
- no superstar research professors
- if you don't actually make good on your "big fish" status, then you break even on the prestige vs opportunity calculation.

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