As someone who has attended and taught at both public and private schools, I can tell you that both have their pros and cons.

Public schools can give you an excellent education at a decent price. No one thinks the education at any of the University of California schools is lacking, for example. The Universities of Michigan and Wisconsin also come to mind. Graduating from Berkeley is plenty prestigious. Public universities are also diverse places, with students from a wide range of backgrounds and experiences. That diversity means that you will find more students like yourself at a public school.

Private schools, at least the elite ones, differ from public schools in that their admissions standards are usually higher. This means that the students around you are better prepared and more competitive. This gives these schools a different feel. They are also more homogeneous. Because tuition is usually much higher than at public schools, their students are typically much more well-off than a typical public school student.

Is the education at the elite private schools "better" than at an excellent public school? That's a difficult question that entire books and Ph.D. dissertations have been written about. The folks at Harvard would certainly like us to think so. Personally, I'm not convinced that its always true. I think it depends a lot on the subject matter and the willingness of the student to take advantage of opportunities presented to them.

The one thing that is true about elite private schools is that they have name recognition. That name will get you job interviews. It will get you respect from others in your field. Perhaps this isn't fair, but its true.

What to do if you are accepted? My advice is to visit all of the potential choices, public and private. Talk with professors in the department in which you intend to major. Find out what sort of research or advanced projects someone with a 4.0 GPA can be involved in. Get a feel for the campus and the students and what your life would be like there. Sit in on a few classes.

Personally, as a professor at a public school that I love, I hope that you get into the private school and that you go. Cary is right, these elite schools need people like you to keep them honest. They should pay you to attend their classes!

But, if you don't get in, or if you decide that the expense is not worth it, you can still make your dreams come true at a good public school. Do something special there, work on some sort of original and indepedent project outside of your classes. Publish. Present at a conference. Do something outstanding. In the end, these things will mean more to you than the name of the school.

Good luck!

Assault is partially defined by intention. The way I see this, you were both drunk and goofing around and your nose got broke. Life is unfair like that some times. It’s true, the person who broke your nose could have handled it better. We are all human and some of us are not very good at it.

According to friends who have survived it, law school is a weird place. It’s full of stress, drinking, and competition. Tight clicks form, but are full of backstabbing and treachery.

My advice is to let it go. Focus on school and finish your law degree. Go out into the real world, which is thankfully not like law school, and be a good lawyer.

You might also want to talk with a psychologist. Feeling like a victim and out of control of your own life is a sign of depression. Depression sometimes results in unreasonable anger.

Hang on man, the light at the end of the tunnel is getting brighter.

"From my perspective, virtually all of the major claims about global warming and its causes still remain to be proved."

What exactly is your perspective? As someone who once considered majoring in geology? As someone who refuses to watch “An Inconvenient Truth?” As someone who doesn't like Al Gore? These perspectives certainly make you an expert. (Pause while letter writer snorts with disgust…)

Perhaps if you'd done any sort of real research on this topic, I'd have more respect for your opinion. In matters of arts and letters, it is possible to have a reasonable opinion about a topic without doing much homework. However, opinions about issues in science and technology really should be informed by an understanding of the facts. Simply basing your opinion on a matter of science on a general dislike of “dogma” and a high school science class view of the environment is intellectually lazy.

Please visit the website of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC): http://www.ipcc.ch/. The IPCC is an international committee of real research scientists that spend their lives studying global climate change. They are convincing that global warming exists and that it is caused by man's activities.

You are a public person. People listen to you. If you are going to speak on a topic that you know little about, you have a duty to educate yourself before opening your mouth.