I'd choose option 2 and pick a course without huge numbers and lecturers whose intent is to get rid of you.
Or better still go the UK and get a proper education in less years.
Yeah? Interesting. Like, it's not the lecturer's intent to get rid of you. They aren't out to get you, they are there to help you. And there's not zero help either, but any help would most likely come from a post-doc, not the lecturer.
But, like you're saying, if there's 500 kids vs 100 kids, the level in help is different.
I'd take the given a chance and have to either be exceptionally good or work really hard option. I'd be curious how the majority of the kids about to sit their LC think. The problem is: they don't know how hard it's potentially going to be.
I dunno about the UK being fundamentally better though. I didn't go to college in the UK though. I can say the US undergrad system is fundamentally worse than Ireland when I was there (in almost all cases - if you're studing undergrad computer science at MIT it's quite good, usually it's not though). The postgrad system for the sciences seems better in the US though.