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[quote=Anonymous]I went to Cal. My firstborn is at Williams.

Aside from cost, I think large publics reward kids with hustle and kids in the top 10-20% of their class. While there's little handholding, a school like Cal actually has a crazy amount of resources available to kids with the gumption to seek them out. And the kids at the top of publics, at least in California, are generally Ivy quality. Most of my peers saw little point to leaving California to pay more at a East Coast school. While I had some auditorium classes, I was also able to develop close relationships with a few professors in my major and minor.  Class registration was a minor irritant and not the massive  issue it's often made out to be on this forum.

On the other hand, Williams provides a crazy amount of resources to its students. If one has to climb the Cal tree a ways to reap its fruit, Ephs have the fruit falling on their heads. And the professorial relationships are real. DC's profs have gone out of their way to help DC with internship and job opportunities. I also think Williams is more rigorous academically across the board. While there is definitely a lot of grinding at Cal, one could also skate by in certain subjects if they were content with B grades. At Williams, I don't think it's possible to skate by in any subject.

I also think there are regional differences in perceived prestige. The West Coast has more quality public schools and thus more alumni from such schools. Few people look down on a Cal, UCLA, or Washington grad or assumes that they were necessarily the "best" schools the grad got into. But it seems like college prestige plays a larger role on the East Coast, where for a long time there seemed to be a perception that one should almost always pick the best, most prestigious college possible. (This, however, seems to be changing.) [/quote]

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