<p>Some others have mentioned this, but it really is important to consider where your son might want to live after college – or what other plans he has after college. If he has any interest in living in the Midwest, then IU and Miami are smart choices. If not, they still are good choices</p>
<p>Miami and Indiana are definitely mid-western and share other similarities. However, there is little doubt that IU’s Kelley School of Business is better than Farmer (which is plenty good). Kelley is almost an elite business school. Among public universities it is really very hard to do better than IU-Kelley – Michigan, Berkeley, and U.Virginia are about the only ones better.</p>
<p>Having said that, overall Miami is generally better than UMD and IU. Miami really is more interested in undergraduate teaching than are IU and UMD which are organized more as typical research universities where, frankly, teaching is secondary.</p>
<p>I do not know about UMD, but IU is at least as big a party/drinking school as Miami. The other difference between Miami and Indiana is that Miami is more conservative – especially the students. If political and social concerns are an issue, then this should be taken into consideration.</p>
<p>Honors programs are not worth much in my opinion. Some are pretty good, some are okay, and many are worthless. No honors program should be a “deal maker” unless merit aid comes with the honors admission.</p>
<p>Finally, in summary, I personally recommend Miami University because it almost certainly provides the most satisfying undergraduate experience (both academically and socially), plus Farmer is definitely very good. Hard to go wrong with any of these three schools, but Miami is much better than some people seem to think.</p>