<p>wow… that’s a great choice to have to wrestle with.</p>
<p>They are equally demanding in the competition for grades, with perhaps Brown being the most relaxed.</p>
<p>Prestige is slightly in the favor of Brown undergraduate, and Berkeley as a “graduate research Institution”, being in the top 2-3 research universities in the world. Northwestern in in the middle on both counts.</p>
<p>Weather absolutely sucks in Chicago from October through March.
Berkeley is ruthless in winnowing down the potential med school applicant pool, so freshman and sophomore science classes see a large failure rate (>20%)</p>
<p>As to sports, Berkeley and Northwestern are both big time programs, about in the middle of their respective conferences. Ivy league sports are sort of like intense intramural. Quaint is the word.</p>
<p>My vote is Brown. If your family makes less than $180,000 per year, I’ll bet it will be much cheaper than NU and about the same or cheaper than Berkeley because of the movement toward eliminating loans in the Ivy League. You’ll get a lot more personal attention than you would at Berkeley. You’ll be more relaxed than you would be at Northwestern.</p>