<p>I agree with JHS. Both schools with the right effort / strategizing can afford you a fine education that will be externally recognized as top notch by graduate school adcoms and choosier employers, but there may be a real difference financially that could be worth exploiting. This is one instance where chasing money may not mean giving up much, if any, quality. </p>
<p>Given UC Berkeleys departmental strengths across the board, I cannot imagine paying 10K more a year (if that is what you mean) to attend UChicago, especially when one takes into account some of the quality of life factors that comes with it (atrociously bad weather by bay area standards, safe but undeveloped campus area, more mundane adjacent city, weaker array of extracurriculars due to its smaller size). For the record, I had a better financial aid offer in favor of Berkeley for college, and regret not being able to take advantage of it (conservative parents irrationally feared the University of California - Birkenstocks). </p>
<p>As for the professorial interaction alluded to in this thread, I am not certain why people think you will get more of this at Chicago. Two reasons. First, a lot of professors at Chicago (and Berkeley) are famous, and as a result dont want to spend a good portion of their class entertaining relatively underdeveloped commentary from gunner students. A good clarifying question here and there is all fine and well, but attempting to lay out your intellectual position time and time again is normally not appreciated. Especially by your classmates who are there to learn from Dr. XYZ, not you. In some ways, there is almost no worse college fate than to be labeled as that kid, who always has to ask a question. Second, why you can make use of office hours you are unlikely to ever get more than 10-20 minutes a week with a moderately popular professor - if that. They need to reserve the bulk of their time for the PhDs whose dissertations they are overseeing, as well as their TAs who have questions about grading, sections, and such. If you really want professors to fawn over your insights, or to hold your hand through term papers and such, then you will need to attend a true liberal arts college or a markedly lesser ranked research university.</p>