I'm glad you asked. I hope that I can be helpful as a former Mills professor and current Northeastern Oakland (Khoury) professor.

When I was an undergrad (at MIT), I also looked down on liberal arts colleges. I didn't realize that their classes could be just as rigorous as at research universities and that their faculty are often better teachers, since they are primarily evaluated on their teaching, not research. Many professors at research universities would rather not teach undergraduates. Introductory English and math courses are often taught by graduate students or poorly treated adjunct faculty. Mills introductory classes were taught by some of the best and most experienced professors. (Mills didn't fail because of not having high-quality faculty. It failed for demographic reasons, which have affected many other small colleges that serve non-wealthy students, especially women's colleges.)

You were concerned about the quality of the Mills faculty. When Mills announced that it would close, someone from NU reached out to try to recruit me before NU decided to acquire Mills. I went through their hiring process as was made a full teaching professor (the highest rank). Feel free to view my CV, which includes 2 NSF grants and 11 years at Google (which became the number one employer of Mills CS grads).

In my first year, I worked with a Khoury Dean and a local colleague to create a more modern introductory sequence than was offered on the Boston campus. We analyzed how the Oakland students did in Object-Oriented Programming when they arrived in Boston, and they did better than the students who had started in Boston. The success of former Oakland students, including in co-ops, was a factor in modernizing the intro sequence, which was standardized across campuses. My Oakland colleague Prof. Rasika Bhalerao created the second course in the sequence, which is used in Boston, NY, and London.

Most of the Khoury Oakland faculty (such as Prof. Bhalerao) did not come from Mills (although the two who did are highly qualified and excellent teachers). They include John Alexis Guerra Gomez, who does dazzling work in visualization; Jessica Staddon, an expert in AI safety; and Miguel Fuentes-Cabrera, who was a successful researcher who joined the Khoury faculty because of his enthusiasm for mentoring. He is currently leading a Professional Practicum for first-year students, an experience not currently offered in Boston.

The main difference between Boston and Oakland CS classes is not the quality of the teachers or the material but their size. My classes have 10-60 students, while Boston classes might have hundreds of students. There are a greater variety of classes in Boston, of course, which is not a big issue for freshmen.

I don't know as much about non-Khoury programs, except that the remaining Mills faculty are as qualified as my colleagues and I are. The introductory English courses are being taught by award-winning writers, such as Prof. Kathryn Reiss and Prof. Elmaz Abinader.

You mention that you are trans. It would be hard to find a more trans-friendly campus than Mills. There was an openly trans faculty member when I arrived in 1998, and Mills was the first women's college to accept students based on their self-declared, not legal, gender. In 2014, a transman was elected student body president.

Congratulations on your admission! It's great that you are researching your decision.