@Mom2aphysicsgeek , I am sure this varies by department, but the stipends + fellowship + travel allowances offered by Berkeley, Wisconsin, UCLA and Michigan were substantially less than the total package offered by the top private Us. Her postdoc and professor friends who had been at a number of schools would talk about this as well, e.g., that Ivy A (or B or C) has money stuffed in the air vents. That was not the basis for her decision, and it does not at all mean that the Big State Us’ offers were not fair, but there was a definite difference.
@ucbalumnus , I am not sure why you’re so intent on disproving an observation I’ve passed along from someone who is inside one of these programs and the experience of someone else who is involved in admissions at another one, but I will throw out one more data point: at the accepted students’ visit at one of the tippy-top schools, one of the professors asked my daughter, sneeringly, why she attended Big State U. “You must have lived really close to it, because it’s not the kind of school anyone would travel to attend.” This is a school with 25th/75th percentile ACT scores of 31-34 and, in fact, many students do travel from very far to attend. It’s probably good for her that this prof wasn’t involved in reviewing her application. Regardless, it is no secret among the students that there is a preference for HYPSC (and whatever initial I’ve left off) undergrads.