<p>Despite any above errors the two schools have many differences. You have to see both campuses to realize how different large Midwestern campuses can be. It is hard to beat the physical setting UW-Madison has, or the liberal atmosphere. Regarding sports- who cares about them as a determinant of college quality? BTW, UW has done very well in many major sports in recent years. Consider the student body academic qualifications- such as entering gpa's, test scores and class ranks. Do not rate a whole university on the basis of one or two majors or one school. A best fit is important- it may matter to have the best dept in a particular field or it may be more important that the whole school atmosphere is at a higher academic level. </p>
<p>The key point here is for the OP to do more research about the various college types he is interested in. We shouldn't hijack this thread with a debate on the IU/UW relative merits. Instead I hope the OP and others reading this thread learned that there are differences in large public U's in the Midwest- we haven't even added several other schools we could to the discussion.</p>
<p>The majority of America doesn't care at all about either UW or IU, in sports or any other category.</p>