<p>Well I live in California, and I have a good number of schools I like, but I want 2 out of state options. I have already found one, and I'm thinking UWM could be the other.</p>
<p>So could anyone describe how life would be there? What is the atmosphere like? What is the city of Madison like?</p>
<p>As a footnote to nothing: UWM is the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, one of the other doctoral degree granting institutions in the UW System. The campus here in Madison is the University of Wisconsin-Madison.</p>
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Madison is, bar none, the best college town.
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<p>You seem to dislike your hometown (and school?)</p>
<p>I think Ann Arbor is perfect... the people leave something to be desired (at least in terms of the students) but the town offers anything and everything you could want save a decent body of water, which still isn't far away.</p>
<p>Yah that is what I'm worried about......When I go to the snow I like it, but I don't know if I could live in it. Does anybody here live in a city that snows?</p>
<p>Well, I live in a city where it snows, but certainly not as much as UW or UMich. I'm going to UMich next year...so I guess I'll find out firsthand about the weather.</p>
<p>In the time I have been here we haven't had all that much snow in Madison. I think that we are more blizzard prone in NoVA than in Madison. The issue isn't so much the snow, the city does a real good job in dealing with it, but the cold. It gets cold earlier and stays cold longer than in the DC area. Long-time residents here tell me that it is substantially warmer than it used to be although they weren't saying that on the day it was -17 (without the windchill factor) last winter. Now that was cold.</p>
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I think Ann Arbor is perfect... the people leave something to be desired (at least in terms of the students) but the town offers anything and everything you could want save a decent body of water,
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<p>I take you've only been to ann arbor once or twice. There isn't really that much to do in Ann Arbor. Aside from parties, most of the time when I want to do something on the weekends I'll go into Detroit. It's certainly not the cultural mecca many posters on here make it out to be.</p>
<p>Oh yea and it doesn't even snow that much in Ann Arbor. Whoever says it does has probably lived in Texas their whole life.</p>
<p>In terms of culture, I would have to imagine A2 is more diverse culturally than Madison.. although I concede to never having been to there. I've just heard their student body is rather homogenous when compared to its peer schools.... but perhaps the city is more diverse? </p>
<p>Ann Arbor has the ethnic restaurants, the ethnic centers, the diverse population, the festivals, etc. Not sure about Madison. Perhaps you could enlighten me.</p>
<p>I always heard that Madison is one of the most liberal places around, so I would imagine the college is diverse. Can't really say, because I've never been there.</p>
<p>I would add that I like AA a lot too. It seems to lack the extra touch of zaniness that happens in Madison but it has all the cool little restaurants and coffee shops you could want at a school. It's better than most other "top" college towns such as Chapel Hill, C'Ville, Athens etc.</p>
<p>Madison has all the festivals you could want. Art, Film, several music, food, farmer's market, etc and nobody has Halloween like Madison. The new performing arts center is better than AA's. The city is fairly diverse with growing hispanic and AA neighborhoods as well as a large international population. The UG student body is diverse by state but less so by race. Good number of internationals.</p>
<p>Are you serious? I go to U-M but I've been here for a few years now and pretty much call it home.</p>
<p>In terms of festivals... I can think of a couple off the top of my head (top of the park, and the art festival going on right now that pretty much consumes downtown.)</p>
<p>I know there are film/book festivals, dance festivals, music, car shows, etc. </p>
<p>Ann Arbor's a boring little city. I don't see why everyone gets offended when I say that</p>
<p>Things Ann Arbor is missing:
record stores (encore is cool, but the other two suck)
museums (umma sucks)
stores that aren't resturaunts
concerts (even wolf eyes doesn't play ann arbor and they're from ann arbor)</p>