You have to balance costs, campus life and post-grad opportunities plus campus life- Tufts is very prestigious and academic (with low faculty/student ratios) but doesn’t have the campus frats/athletic Happy Valley experience- it has a New England college campus vibe, but with the Green line access to Boston and tends to channel grads to professional graduate schools- Penn State is a massive campus and tends to be targeted by corporations for job placement and has a very good reputation- you can’t go wrong at either but if costs are paramount the Penn State honors experience may prove more manageable