Good Lord, do the people ripping on Santa Clara have any firsthand knowledge of the school? It’s very well-respected here in the Bay Area, and it uses its location in the middle of Silicon Valley to great advantage. This is probably the most entrepreneurial area of the country, and that will rub off on anyone who goes to school around here.
If Wisconsin is like other big state flagships I’m familiar with, for the first two years you’d be sitting in lecture halls with many hundreds of other students, and interacting mostly with grad student TA’s rather than professors. According to US News, only 1.6% of Santa Clara’s classes are over 50 students, while 19.1% of Wisconsin’s classes are over 50 students. I spent my freshman year at Ohio State in huge lecture halls with TA’s who couldn’t speak English. I had a great time, but didn’t learn a damn thing. Transferring to a small school (not SCU) where the largest class I ever had was about 60 people made all the difference in the world.
SCU is not categorized as a National University by US News because it doesn’t offer doctoral degrees, not because it’s an undistinguished school. It is ranked #2 in the West among non-PhD granting schools. Wisconsin is a research university. SCU is a teaching university. Wisconsin has a student-faculty ratio of 17:1. SCU has a student-faculty ratio of 12:1. SCU also has a slightly lower acceptance rate than Wisconsin.
I’m sure the party scene at Wisconsin is better than at Santa Clara, but I would expect someone would get a better undergraduate business education at SCU,