Best 4 years of your life!

Introduction
Do you want a large, gorgeous campus with the opportunity to study anything you want? If so, this is the school for you. Set on a plush campus in Wisconsin's capital, the students have the ability to do anything from playing softball on a frozen lake to sailing on it in the warmer months. You can study pretty much anything, and find classes on subjects you never even knew existed. Football Saturdays are the pinnacle of why we have school spirit, and the "after hours" fun spills over in every inch of Downtown Madison.

Campus Life and Social Life
Living in the dorms freshman year - public or private - is the best way to find your path in Madtown. Some people say the weekends really start on Thursdays, but, in reality, you can easily party every night of the week if you want. The bars are full, the Terrace is AMAZING when it's warm, and between Football Saturdays, Halloween, the Mifflin Block Party, you are guaranteed to have plenty of stories to walk away with after your 4 years.

The best part is that you can make Madison what you want: a big or a small party scene, big on extracurriculars, political activism, academics, sports, Greek System, etc. The University is large enough that you can be anyone you want to be, and it's easy enough to make Madison small enough that everyone knows your name. You get to choose just want you want it to be. Academics
Madison has a really good reputation for a reason. Even when you are in the intro classes along with 500 of your fellow students, the professors are accessible - you just have to make more of an effort. When you get deeper into your major, the class size goes down considerably and I found my professors and TAs actually cared about how I did. Even the toughest ones wanted to push us harder than we had ever been pushed to show us that we could do it. The University is big on research, and you might have to fight to get on a team. The Business School really does prepare you for the real world, as does the Journalism School. There are some easy majors - I'll let you find those for yourself, but if you want to be challenged and really get an education, it's there for the taking.

Student Body
Most of the students come from Wisconsin, Minnesota and Illinois. The most surprising thing I found were how many people come from California and the Northeast too. The breakdown is more public vs private dorm, Greek vs non-Greek students. And it's not in the way you think. Basically it just turns out that when people find the group(s) they fit in with, they stop looking to meet new people. Not that you don't meet people in all of your four years; it's just that you get comfortable with the people you click with - pretty much the same thing that happens anywhere you go in life.

In Closing...
Madtown is awesome. The campus is beautiful, the people have that MidWestern charm regardless of where they actually come from, the classes are interesting, and the school gives you every opportunity to find out who you want to be when you grow up.