What Criteria Should a Young Hacker Apply to College Choice?
ibgeek: I'm currently a junior in college.  I decided on a good (but not great), liberal arts school with about 1800 students over going to Univ of Florida, where I was also accepted.  Here's my analysis of that.Advantages up to this point:
* Flexibility -- There is a lot of flexibility in my choices of courses and in life here in general.  A lot of students here are able to double-major, travel abroad, etc. because of that flexibility.* Cost -- with financial aid, it's cost me a little bit more than a public univ but not by much.  ($4k/year difference max)* Personal attention -- I can show up at a prof's office and chat about anything.  They know my name, my interests, and my abilities.  This has helped with solving bureaucratic problems, enabled me to get great letters of recommendation, find professors to do research with, and helped me to gain access to various academic programs.  If you're at a research school, most profs. don't care about you, the lowly undergrad, unless you can do something for them.  And some of those prestigious schools have profs. like that.* Size and Selectivity -- Eckerd is not the most selective school I could have gone too but I have found some peers (although not most) who can challenge me.  The advantage of this is that you can quickly find the other cream of the crop and challenge each other, but at the same time, I have found it easy to gain access to research programs, awards, TA positions, etc. on campus because I could easily get myself noticed and show myself as the cream of the crop.* Time -- My courses aren't always very challenging or time consuming so it's easy to take overload or to use my free time to do other things, particularly things related to research or future academic endeavors.Disadvantages:
* Challenge -- I feel like few of my courses have really challenged me.  But, I have friends who transferred here from schools like Rochester Inst. Tech and Univ of Rochester who say that those schools don't offer more of a challenge necessarily, either.  However, they have also said that maybe you have high quality peers there in your field, but they tend to lack social skills.  (This may change as I get farther into the courses for my double-major in math.)In my case, Eckerd offers a lot of advantages in terms of accolades, letters of recommendations, good grades, etc. which will help me get into grad school (which is my goal).  But at the same time, it's been frustrating over the last few years since I've rarely run into people who know more than I do or who have are more skilled than I am.(I should also mention that I have done research not only at Eckerd but at the University of Connecticut for the last few years... I've tried to take advantage of resources outside of Eckerd to supplement its small size.)