I would agree that class size and access to faculty are huge factors, especially now, when so many standard first- and second-year courses use the same small pool of textbooks, with many of the publisher-provided electronic resources (e.g., teaching videos, interactive demonstrations, online problem sets, text-aligned assessments). As students move into upper-division, more-specialized coursework, I think research opportunities become more important.

...pronounced like the long vowel and first letter of the alphabet...