I think people have different reasons for going to a big school or a small school.
I went to a rather large high school and I was reluctant to go to a big university b/c i really like having that teacher-student relationship where i can go talk to them whenever i needed help and not just some big headed TA. I go to a small school (theres around 4,000-5,000) and i love it. While some people say bigger schools offer better majors and curricula, i have to beg to differ in my case. We have one of the top rated School of Sciences as well as School of Businesses. In addition to that, although we are a small school, our althetics department has done pheonominal. Last year our Softball team won Nationals and the year before that our Baseball team won Nationals for Div. II. and every year our basketball team makes it into playoffs. I love my school b/c my biggest class is like 20 people and my professors know me by name and major. Its nice to get to talk to them whenever i need help as well as being able to walk in my advisor's office in between classes to chat about anything ranging from internships to the latest on the World Series. Theres a lot of great networking going on when there is personal contact with the bigwigs at school who know other people to land you a REAL nice job before of after graduation. (I already have a job in line for me and i'm just a junior...go fig!) And of course there are like 4 other universities in San Antonio and we always party it up with all of em, so its always a blast. And of course its nice to see the different hotties at different schools
It all depends on what people want out of college. People want and expect different things. I'm not gonna bash on the big schools I'm originally from Austin and i pretty much grew up on the UT campus since my mom works there. Its really interesting to see the differences between my St. Mary's and UT. STMU may be smaller with more of a personal touch to its curricula, but i still LOVE sitting in that UT football stadium with like 80,000 other people screaming our heads off when a TD is made!!