Visit to the Flagship

Today we drove to Madison to visit the UW system's flagship university.  Aside from it being a bastion of left-leaning (bordering on communist) teaching, I have to say it wasn't too bad.  It was a big tour, and we were one of three groups.  When we checked in at the Union, we were told the program would begin in a ballroom on the second floor.  When it was time to start, there had to be at least 300-400 people in the room.  When the speaker began he asked for a show of hands for everyone was from.  There were a lot of people from Wisconsin, but I would have to say the majority were from Illinois and Minnesota.  But there were also people from all over the US, Florida, California, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina just to name a few.  I suppose that is what you get when you are a top research university with 40,000+ students.

After the presentation about Madison, we got assigned a tour guide.  And we just missed getting a guide who was from Menomonee Falls.  The guide for the group right in front of us was the son of Ali's 1st/2nd grade teacher at Riverside, and if I remember correctly, he was the Student Council/Body President at the High School when Sarah was a sophomore.  Our guide wasn't bad though.  She kept us moving which I guess was a good thing since we had so much territory to cover.  We didn't get to go into a whole lot of buildings, it was pretty much a walk around the campus pointing out some of the more significant buildings as well as getting a history of the University.  

I have to admit, the campus was beautiful.  And there were two distinct areas, a more "cosmopolitan", city side, and the more rural, relaxed side near the lake.  Plus, the amount of things they had available to keep you busy during down time was amazing.  We sat thru a mini program on UW's health sciences programs and it sounded pretty good.  I don't know how much that Sarah got out of it, because after the walking tour, we were pretty tired, and I think she used it more as a rest.  

In the end, I think Sarah liked the campus.  But I think she still likes UW-LaCrosse as her number one choice, and Madison would be number two.  We have one more tour to go, but I think that she is has her preference list pretty well set.