<p>A few opening thoughts as these will inevitably pop up over the next few weeks, but please chime in:</p>
<p>1) You are soliciting advice from an anonymous internet community. Keep that in mind at all times. There are people out there who wouldn't leave advice about a shampoo product up for discussion in an anonymous internet community.</p>
<p>2) If your choice is going to be influenced based on a straw poll from an anonymous internet community, I feel bad for you. If anything, I suggest you move over to a forum with a higher current student population and more accountability for individual posts (i.e. facebook). But even there, I think you're treading on thin, thin ice.</p>
<p>3) There aren't real answers to these questions. Peaches or pineapples? Walnuts or pecans? Mozart or Beethoven? The "best" answer is individual to your situation, and the BEST thing you can do is to think about EVERYTHING that matters to YOU (finances, campus live, dorms, academic programs, faculty, and so on) and make the decision from there. Please don't listen to "common opinion," not even common CC opinion. The vast majority of posters are parents (motivated to boost the school their d/s or they attended) or prospective students (with a lack of real knowledge). Current students can provide some information on their own school and perhaps some factual information on others, but I feel really hard-pressed when somebody wants to know my opinion on a school I never attended.</p>
<p>3a) The only time I see myself entering these conversations is to correct a factual point or to bring up something another poster said that I think is very far from reality. For example, if somebody implied that Chicago students are by and large not interested in athletics, I feel very much the opposite way, and might provide some evidence to support that. I will not answer this question for you out right unless I feel that there is a clear and obvious reason for one answer. And yes, I will root against my own school.</p>
<p>3b) Many students go off to college unsure that their school is the "right" school. I am willing to bet e-cash that there are more students who go off to college sure they will be unhappy and end up pleasantly surprised than students who start off thinking that college will be awesome and end up miserable. Making college work for you is a lot about being resourceful and adaptive (and, some amount of luck-- my cousin adores her school but had a nightmare roommate experience her first year). If you expect college to just be awesome without any amount of searching and adjusting on your part, you are in for a surprise. I had a lot of adjustments to make coming to Chicago.... all of a sudden it was okay to talk about books and things like that outside of the classroom.... not everybody understood my cultural background.... I didn't meet best friends right away.... I had to learn how to read Plato.</p>
<p>4) The best way to get to know a school if you're still at an impasse is to talk to students who are like yourself. The tour, visit, etc. are not really enough-- you're smart and resourceful... find a way to get in touch with students who are in your major and participate in activities you're interested. I might be a sorority member and a pre-med who is on club crew; you might be an aspiring classics major who wants to start a D&D campaign. We might attend the same school, but we have vastly different interests. (Even though we might be friends).</p>