You only get to do college once - speaking from experience, I say go for atmosphere - mine had none, and I truly regret that decision.

Not really. I know lots of people killing themselves by degrees. :D

But you're mostly right, you seldom do the whole dorm thing later in life.

Okay Dar, true dat. Professional Students have been a large section of my demographic. (Had parents who could support their habit.) I had the choice of a large well known uni with football and cheerleaders and sororities, etc. or the smaller lesser-known campus where my Olde English classes had only 30-35 students - I opted for being attended to rather than popular.

I picked the geek university, where I was one of the more *normal* people on campus -- and waddyaknow, I'm popular! (See: cyberbully thread for why this is a surprise.)

I vote for atmosphere too, because the thing no one tells you about college is it is your first crash-course in real networking, especially in fields like the arts. These are the people who will bring all their friends onto a project when one of them gets a lucky break.

Depends how serious you are about going into the arts afterwards, and to what extent Emerson is more connected to that field. Also, depends how much difference there is in atmosphere. I mean, if one is academically excellent but likely to leave you feeling isolated and the other looks fun and inclusive then go with fun and inclusive...But if both look fun and one just looks a little more fun than the other, then I'd seriously take into account quality of programme.