UW Madison vs. Iowa

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Iowa
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<p>My son will be a senior in HS and is interested in engineering. We live in MN and would like to enjoy the tuitition reciprocity we have with WI. WI is a good school, we know that. And so is Iowa, although it lacks the same reputation. That's fine. I think an engineering degree from either would land a few decent job offers (not this spring, maybe). And WI has become pretty competitive to get into, and I figure at the moment he's no better than 70% sure of admittance. But he's in at Iowa as his RAI is about 300 due mostly to the number of classes he's taken. So we see Iowa as an obvious back-up to WI.</p>

<p>So my question is, who's looked at these two schools and what are your observations, not so much about the academics as about the environment, the students, the progressiveness (or lack thereof) of the student body, the respective cities they're in, etc? My perception is that Iowa is similar in many ways to Madison, but we've only spent a little time at Iowa. Not enough to know.</p>

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<p>If you are going into engineering, I would look at Iowa State instead of Iowa, but it probably depends on the type of engineering he wants to pursue.
That aside, I know Iowa City is kind of liberal and there have been some recent problems with crime, but that could go back to normal by next fall.</p>