This morning I attended a wonderful session at CUNY's Macaulay Honors College where they shared with guidance counselors from around the city all of the exciting things going on with this fantastic program. My beliefs about the strengths of the CUNY system were only confirmed by the things they had to say. The graduating senior from Baruch we heard from was on par with the Wharton student I heard from at Penn this past Fall.
Don't make any mistake about it, Macaulay is fiercely competitive (They only take about 20% of applicants and the average GPA/SAT is 93/1400+ on the first two sections) but anyone considering Columbia, Barnard, and NYU should also add this to the list.
Oh, and did I mention it is tuition free and they provide all students with a Mac laptop?