Dream Private Universities vs. Free Instate Undergrad Astrophysics

Go to Arizona for undergrad. That’s an awesome school for anything astronomy-related. There’s no way Penn or Berkeley are worth the extra cost for an undergraduate degree.

You’re going to have to go to graduate school to make a career out of astronomy/astrophysics, so wait until then to decide whether to leave the state.

I don’t know how well it’s ranked, but Arizona State has some pretty famous cosmologists there.