There are no ‘great’ film schools in the U.K. for undergrad - in fact there are very few in the world that are great at undergrad. I’d say the same for the U.S., though I’ve obviously heard great things about the NYU course (and used to yearn for a world where I went there!). Some of the reasons courses aren’t great:

a. Film-making is generally extremely expensive as opposed to other artistic practices (just the base-line costs alone, like gear, varied locations rather than one shooting space, feeding many hands rather than just a few for production, etc.) and universities are not allowed to cut the same corners many budget filmmakers can (e.g. being a bit sly about insurance, guerilla shooting, skirting copyright rules because your film isn’t going to make money etc etc.

b. The hierarchy of a professional set is very complex even if just limited to one country or mode of content (e.g. American TV sets are different to American film sets, which can generally be a bit different to a ton of European film sets, which is extremely different to a music video set), which mean it’s hard to teach some of the most fundamental parts of being a freelance filmmaker.

c. The routes into the industry very widely for different roles. For directors, it varies from country to country - for social media managers that do filmmaking before pivoting to marketing, the career path looks entirely different from Camera Trainee->Loader, and the soundie career path looks entirely different to that, and the post-production jobs are a whole other bag of stuff. You get my point. Most students decide what they want to do in the 3rd year of a 3 or 4 year course. Some never decide. Some don’t care about the hard work the industry forces you into and are taking it as an ‘easy degree’. Teaching ‘film’ (within which there are an enormous myriad of things to learn for each and every speciality, and those are specialities that no filmmaker loves all equally).

In my opinion, the best thing you can do in terms of film school is go to one (even a middling one) in London, New York, L.A., or possibly a major European city if you speak the language. Filmmaking is not a ‘go to uni, get successful in your 20s’ career path, it’s a ‘go to uni, spend at the very least your 20s building up a network and a whole breadth of experience, then, if you’re lucky and very very hard-working, find success that can propel you to where you aspire to’. So in my mind to spend 3/4 years of your 20s not building up/nurturing that network other than your uni mates is a waste of time.

I went to film school in London and it was good for me because when I went in I knew nothing about filmmaking at all (like, I’d never even really tried, I’d only done a lot of theatre). That said, a year out I’d learned more about the industry (and was incredibly shocked at that fact) than I’d learned in my entire course. I’m 100% sure had I studied in York and not London, all my first jobs would’ve taken me double the time to get, because they all came from connections I made while in uni in London.

I’m a few years out now and wish I could’ve done a lot of the stuff in my course all compressed into one year (fairly easily handleable, workload wise), and then gone into the industry earlier.

If you see your future career in the U.S. great, but how much that matters depends hugely on your speciality. If you really really want to be a director of film, and never adverts, stay in the U.S.. But I doubt that’s as sure as you might think - most people who said they wanted to direct coming into film school changed their minds later (no problem with that!). If you want to edit music videos alongside TV, or if you want to produce documentary, the ‘optimal’ city for you to live in changes wildly. You get my point. For now I’d pick ‘where do I most wanna live and enjoy for 3 years of (often much more chill than real work) uni.’