My goals are to learn, develop myself, meet interesting people and do interesting things. i feel like western does a mediocre job at enabling these goals for me. namely;

1. London sucks. nothing going on and not a fan of the bars at all(i like places you can dance, not bland university bars with shitty music), the city is a cultural black hole. i realize now that what i really want is city life, with things to see and explore. the drug scene also sucks compared to the toronto area and montreal.

2. for the field i want to go into (AI, machine learning) UofT is a better choice (this is specific to me, western is a generally a good school academically speaking)

3. the majority of the people i've met in first year lack the maturity i was expecting. I was hoping to meet more valuable, interesting people than I have, which could be entirely my fault, so i will forgo any judgement until the end of second year on this matter.

on the positive, the girls (and boys) of western are a good looking bunch, cant complain in that department.

in short, dont make your decision on superficial marketing bullshit like "great social life", "reputation", "we dont treat you like a number", "university experience", etc.

look at the hard facts, the more detailed your search is, the better. to start:

1. how does your specific department/program stack up? notable professors? facilities? courses available? co-op? research?
2. what does the school as a whole offer? student resources? opportunities? notable clubs? facilities like gym, library, etc? is it a place you can see yourself walking around or is it a barren shithole.
3. this may not matter to you, but cost (including cost of living)
4. city? living in a nice city with good places to eat, good bars, public transportation, shit to see and do, etc can enable you to make your own experience.

dont listen to anecdotal or superficial comments, they dont mean shit and everyone is biased, not many people have been to more than one school.

most importantly: know what you want! and i know this is hard, i knew i wanted to go into business because i wanted to solve global issues by starting a tech company. then, i realized business school is a joke and the people who "change the world" are the brainy bunch of scientists and engineers who build said companies. So I wanted to be an ECE. still, I didn't know what technology or issue I was going to devote my life to. As "luck" would have it, I ended up in CS and math and i couldn't be happier because i found that technology; artificial intelligence. it happens to combine many of my passions, interests and neurotic obsessions.

now that i know exactly what i want to do, it is easier to choose what direction in life to take based on specifics. its not such a blurry mess of a road anymore. so i advise you to look within yourself and try to understand your criteria as best as possible, then make a decision.

ps. don't feel pressured to go to school if you aren't ready or sure of what you want. there is not shame in that.