@TomSrOfBoston :
I guess I just don’t know what type of experience I consider the better UG experience. In terms of non-academic attributes of the academic experience, many US elite publics and privates I guess are better, but I can’t say I prefer the U.S style of academics at the UG level over a very strong program overseas. If my HS and the US k-12 system primed me (an average student attending a selective school) to be much better in a certain area early on, I likely would have enjoyed “hitting the ground running” with much more advanced material once I got to college. The U.S. has much more of a tracking system and the offerings at elites, especially in STEM, show it. You have them offering the students who went far beyond the curriculum “special” level courses that may be closer to an introductory level of theory (as in serves the masses) in the area at somewhere like Oxbridge. The more average student at most U.S. elites gets more “snuggy” interactions with faculty, but also get taught at lower levels of theory (yes, you get a more intensive and continuous workload, but often the level of cognition for that work may not be the same and may sometimes devolve into busy work which we were kind of used to from HS). Always a trade-off I guess. I always wonder if the less structured schedule of work at those schools leads to more self-directed learning whereas in the U.S. we mostly stick to the beat of the impending exams.