<p>I am stuck. I love both schools and can not decide which to attend. I will be majoring in Biochemistry and planning on attendning Medical school. If I attend Madison, I will be recieving $17,000 in scholarships of an estimated $20,000 tuition/ room and board. If I attend Northwestern I will recieve $40,000 of an estimed $55,000. </p>
<p>I love Madison because it has a great campus life. There are fun things everywhere. Also, I feel that I will be able to have a great GPA and enjoy school. I am also admitted into the honor's program at Madison. Madison is a great education.</p>
<p>I love Northwestern because of the prestige and Chicago. Is it worth it to study all the time to maintain an ok GPA. I want to have fun in college but I hear that Northwestern has some scary "weed out policy." I will not let myself be weeded out, but I want to enjoy school. I know I want to be a pediatrcian, but I don't want to have my dream crushed by not being accepted into medical school. </p>
<p>Also, Madison has a higher rating for biochemistry than Northwestern. However, Northwestern is ranked higher overall.</p>
<p>What should I do? I love both schools equally! What would a medical school rather see? Which school is better? Which school is more fun? Any badgers or wildcats opinions? Thanks! I have untill May 1st.</p>
<p>I have almost the exact same circumstances and am wondering the same thing. I keep hearing med schools don’t care where you go to undergrad and that I should save my money for that. However, I like NU a lot more and it much higher ranked in subjects besides biology and biochemistry. I want to hear what other people hear have to say.</p>
<p>Medical school will not care if you go to Northwestern or UW. They will care about your GPA and your MCAT score. If you like both schools equally, UW should win out on cost. UW is a highly respected university and I would not get too bogged down in the ratings for particular departments. Most of those ratings apply to grad school programs, not undergrad.</p>
<p>So you are talking 3K per year vs 15K per year?</p>
<p>Wisconsin is right there with Berkeley, UCLA, Michigan, Virginia, UNC as far as top publics.
I would save that 48K and go to Wisconsin, especially because you love both and would not feel you are losing an opportunity, which you aren’t at that extra cost - its too much.</p>
<p>Wisconsin is a gold mine at the grad level everywhere you turn. But undergrad is a different story. Large classes, TAs and less personal attention are the rule and likely to worsen significantly with state budget cuts coming. </p>
<p>Northwestern still recruits a class an academic level higher and has little of Wisconsin’s funding woes.</p>
<p>But $12k/ year is not nothing. Unless your 4 year undergrad degree becomes a 5 year at Wisconsin due to class lockouts, it will be hard to justify spending this kind of money and then taking on med school debt on top of that.</p>