[dwaxe]

He'll have more students (and therefore more total impact) at a large public school.

Also, maybe the goal is to change the expectation that research universities lack good teachers? Public colleges educate many times more students than private ones, let alone small liberal arts schools.

[bpicolo]

UC Berkeley IS a large, public school.

[narsil]

Seems like dwaxe knows that and was suggesting why the OP would prefer Berkeley over a smaller school.