Northwestern vs Wisconsin Madison

<p>More of the same: admission choice question. After reading tons on the forums we are still torn over the decision we have to make. Please advise:
My son is admitted to:
Northwestern (EFC $33,000, grant is 9,000)
Tufts (EFC $33,000, grant is 5,000)
Wisconsin Madison ($16,000 - we are Minnesota residents).
Waitlisted in Yale, Stanford, Wash U in St.Louis.</p>

<p>He is bright, sofisticated, wants to go to graduate school (loves to learn).
Undesided major in liberal arts - History, International relations, Political Science, Economy(?).
We are immigrants (came 10 years ago). Our salary do not reflect our financial status (have to support elderly parents, do not have money for retirement). Basically we can only afford $15.000 per year, the rest will have to be my son loans (about $15,000 per year for Northwestern, more for Tufts). Visited Madison and Chicago, There is an honor program in Madison, nice campus, but... my s always wanted urban school, challenge, sopisticated people, kind of suffer from Midwest mentality (although has a lot of friends in his school), hoped to go to East Coast.
Is prestige of Northwestern (Tufts or others) and atmosphere worth having
a huge undergaduate debt?</p>

<p>Not really. He can find a good set of like-minded friends at UW and go east for grad school. Around a quarter of UW students are from Chicago/NY/NJ/LA. That's 6500 students or so.</p>