If a high school student is making a decision between attending their local state university and a private university, is it a good idea for them to visit professors at their local university to ask for advice before making their decision of where to attend?

I agree largely with Jay's assessment. Basically, most high school students' views of college life are fairly disconnected from reality, and is yet another step away from research and faculty's view of the university life.  In addition, I simply can't see any professor under just about any circumstance say that their institution is not as good as private school X.  So I personally think visiting the schools will not be very useful at all. As a professor, I'm always happy to meet high school students to chat. But I'm also quite pragmatic, and realize that there is very little chance for me to really influence his/her education, outside of the 1 or 2 quarters when he/she sits in one of my classes. Most undergraduates don't end up doing research, and the chances of them working with me on my topics are even lower.  So as much as I would enjoy such a conversation, it is more for the feel-good benefit of the parents/students than any tangible benefit for students down the road. My personal views is that undergraduate life is not about research, but much more about learning from your peers. In that sense, choosing the top schools who have the best students, usually approximated by selectivity metrics, is the best you can do.  So understanding the quality of students that attend each school would likely be the deciding factor for me.  Of course, I am also personally biased, and believe that education (i.e. peer learning) from a more selective school is worth most differences in tuition.  So I would likely lean towards the private school (assuming it is significantly higher ranked, and the decision between the two is one of in-state tuition vs. out-of-state private education).  That may not be practical in many situations for most families.  And yes, I say this even as I work at the largest public university system in the country.  The UC system is great, and Berkeley is highly ranked nationally.  But if I was a high school senior, I would choose a highly ranked private school (Yale, Stanford, Duke, etc) over Berkeley.  As a faculty member, I would advise the student to go to the best ranked school, and then come see me when they're looking hard at graduate programs and research groups.

I think the answers you’ve received are helpful in giving you an overview of what the typical student can expect when talking to a faculty member. But if you are not typical then I very much encourage you to find some faculty member who can answer your questions. But not typical I mean that you may already have a specific area of interest with at least some experience. In addition, if you are a star, then I would make this known. In a number of cases in my career I had students contact me about research. These students were either accepted into honors programs or had some other metric that demonstrated they were coming in at an advanced level in at least one field of interest. Many universities have a faculty member who is in charge of the undergraduate programs for his or her department. This might be a great person to talk to. Or if you are interested in engineering you might ask to see if you can visit the professor in his or her lab and if you could get a tour from the faculty member or a student. There have been times when I would contact a faculty member to ask if they would help recruit a student because the student demonstrated outstanding potential. A number of these students became the stars of the department. In addition, some schools have offices that oversee giving funds for undergraduate research. You might also consider making an appointment with the person who heads these efforts. For example, UNC has a summer stipend program and you might go in and ask what kinds of things typically get funded and  what percentage of students who apply get funded etc. Private schools, in some cases, have outstanding resources, but some major public research universities often have great options too. The Stanfords and Yales etc. have the best resources in the world but many State schools have great labs and undergraduate research options. If you are highly motivated and have questions that are detailed and are not covered on a website I’d go in and try to meet with faculty who might be interested in you and might become a mentor later on. To give just one Quora example, if Jessica Su had applied to my university I would have had several faculty members contact her directly and have had them write to say they would love to have her. I mention her as she’s one of the rock stars of Quora but also because her talents were so great in high school that universities would have tried, at least in some cases, to recruit her. But this only happens, typically, with those at the top end of the applicant pool. Finally,the people who work in admission know lots of broad brush stroke information but their knowledge, for the most part, of specifics in a large university are often not that detailed or deep. I think undergraduate directors might be well worth contacting at either public or private schools. UNC program https://our.unc.edu/students/funding-opportunities/fellowships/surf/

If your goal is to do research and have a career in academia, I think it does make sense to talk to any professors you can find who will talk to you, especially if they do research in the broad area you are interested in. The type of school they attended previously can't hurt, but is largely irrelevant, other than the fact that it had a PhD program (the research vs. non-research divide is much clearer than the private vs. public divide, if your goal is a research career). I also wouldn't worry too much about bias - professors have very little incentive to sell their school to prospective undergrads, even if they might "do research" together (the student gets much more out of it than the professor, generally, and the professor also has very little information about how you compare to other students, since you haven't taken any of their classes). For e-mail, I would maybe recommend something along these lines... Hello XXXX, My name is XXXX, and I am a recently admitted undergraduate student interested in an academic career doing research in XXXX. I was also admitted to XXXX, and was wondering if you would be willing to take a few moments to share some advice as I make my decision about where to attend, given my career interests and your experience in this area. I am particularly interested in learning about opportunities to do research with faculty, develop a research portfolio, and develop a foundation that will help me with future graduate school admissions and success.  I live locally, and would love to have a few minutes to chat in person, but would be grateful for advice in any format that works best for you. Thank you for your time. Best regards, XXXX Good luck!

I would be happy to share honest advice in this situation although it is a little abstract because I do not teach in a PhD program.  For the record, I am a big proponent of the California State University and the UC systems as ways to educate nearly any student who wants to be educated and is willing to work at it, however, my daughter goes to a private college (draw any conclusion you'd like from that).

If you can succeed at a large state school (not everyone can), then cost can/should be a major factor.  Going $100k+ in debt or more is crippling.  So all things being equal, I'd factor that in. For what its worth, I went to UT Austin for undergrad, graduated with no debt, and felt that my undergraduate education was no better or worse than those of my Berkeley peers who went to MIT, Stanford, Cornell, etc.  However not everyone can succeed in an environment with large classes, high student-to-TA ratios, etc.  It takes a significant amount of self-directed effort outside of class to go beyond what the school offers you.

High school students can and do get surprisingly useful information from college professors IF they take time to have a grasp of what sorts of connections to life beyond the campus some professors have. It is fairly common for some kinds of professors to have close ties to industry / private sector. In fields from accounting to engineering and finance it is probably rare for faculty not to have good connections and if the faculty does not have such ties it likely would not bode well for future employment. A fair number of professors in other areas like psychology and the social sciences very likely do some collaboration or consulting for private sector firms. With just a few hours of prep one could easily go through the online catalog and cross check which faculty members have the biggest online footprints - by itself not really a measure of anything web savvy promotion, but increasingly something that Universites do value and ultimately something that could prove valuable to you when you look to further education or employment....