I know this thread is from May, but I just found this now and I want to add something. My dad really wanted me to apply to Rutgers about two years back, but my mom and I wanted no part of it. Part of the reason honestly was because we felt the academics weren’t as good as other schools OOS. Also felt, at the time, that a lot of the students who attended Rutgers were typical Jersey meatheads and Guidos, the type of people whose excessively loudmouthed pride in their home state sounds insufferable, unwarranted, and only makes you hate the state even more. None of the other in-state publics caught my eye, and I eventually settled on applying to an in-state private as my safety. I probably would have gone absolutely mental if I was forced to stay in-state. For one, @TomSrOfBoston is correct that NJ really sorely lacks prestigious universities - Princeton is the only world-class university in the state, whereas other states have at least three. Stevens is the only other decent private, but that’s all it is - decent. Rutgers and TCNJ are good in the way of public Us, and Rowan is decent overall, but that’s it. NJ’s top five Us consist of one Ivy, two good publics, one decent (but expensive) private, and one decent public. There is a huge drop-off in academic quality after that. Rutgers Newark, Monmouth, Stockton, Drew, NJIT are all okay; strictly average and nothing more. Some of that bunch are more expensive than others, but none of them are particularly cheap. Seton Hall is the only NJ univ with somewhat decent sports, but there’s not much else to it at all besides an unjustifiably high price tag. You could go through at least six or seven of the top 10 schools in some other states before you’d see a NJ school not named Princeton mentioned anywhere. That is part of the reason why all NJ schools not named Princeton all struggle to attract any decent quantity or quality OOS talent to attend school in the Garden State. Another reason was that I REALLY wanted and NEEDED to get away from the socially toxic environment created by my HS schoolmates (my class in particular was awful, but all the grades after the most recent graduates are even worse).
A year later, I’ve realized that it really has nothing to do with academics at all - Rutgers is a good school. It’s more to do with the huge size and my own perception of the school as a whole based on the size, crime statistics, the surrounding area, and the attitudes of my close friends towards the school. One of my dear friends is a rising senior at Loyola MD. I visited her house during winter break last year and Rutgers came up. Although she wanted me to apply to Rutgers, she later told me that it was good that I didn’t. Her reasoning had nothing to do with the academics, I’ll say that much. I agreed with her and said that I would never have attended even if I had gotten in. The fact that a bunch of my HS classmates would attend (Rutgers is normally the 4-year school that my HS sends the most students to - Penn State took that crown this year) was enough of a turn off already. Obviously, they weren’t gonna be the only people I would’ve seen there, but I still really didn’t want anything to do with them in the first place. I’m my graduating class’s sole representative at my university, which is just the way I like it. Then there was the huge student-on-student crime which seems to be a problem on all three campuses. And of course, the enrollment size was way too big for my liking. The mere idea of having to take a bus to multiple classes…no thank you.
I actually visited Rutgers yesterday with a friend. Nothing official or anything like that, just driving around. While I did note that everything around the school seemed Rutgers-related, my feelings about the campus being too large were confirmed. In addition, the campus is actually pretty ugly. Not gonna lie. The area the school is located in only hurts its cause - the surrounding area of my own school blows Rutgers’ out of the water in addition to the two schools being academically comparable. So no, I wouldn’t have liked it there at all. Not to mention that more of my HS classmates are actually transferring there this fall after spending their freshman years OOS, some of whom attended the likes of UMass Amherst (notably similar to Rutgers in that the sports teams are woeful) and URI. But my dear friend and senior prom date is heading there this fall, so I guess I can ease up on it now. 
Those who look down on Rutgers because they think it’s a poor school are being ridiculous. I’m saying that as someone who used to be one of those people. Just ignore the people who say that, because they’re not reasonable. Those who think that a lot of Rutgers students are guidos and overly prideful and the girls are a little trashier than most - I can see how they would come to that conclusion, but painting them ALL like that is also totally false. But I do also have to address some comments upthread. Asserting that all 30,000+ NJ students go OOS solely because they hate Rutgers or their state is just as ridiculous as saying that all 30,000 Rutgers students are trashy ruffians, if not even more so. Coming from someone who attends an OOS public and plans on staying in that particular state for several years after, the stereotyping on both sides HAS to stop.
This family, which resides in a suburb that is even more affluent than my own snooty north Jersey hometown, did very poor planning and are now made to pay the price for it. Instead of complaining about OOS publics not giving you full aid and crying about the types of girls you fear your son will date, maybe you should’ve taken the time to run NPCs BEFOREHAND. But since you didn’t, I guess try to be at least somewhat excited about it? I understand it must suck, but don’t have your son go into a school with one foot out of the door. Surely he will find some aspects of Rutgers that may make it tolerable enough to stay. But if he goes this year, he’s probably going to have to attend all four years. Because if you can’t afford an OOS flagship now, surely you won’t ever be able to.