It's an easy pick, ofcourse for student like you who's more concern of porma than to be practical, you will surely pick mazda 3. Let me give you some advice, I own a 2.0 Mazda 3 variant, the handling is good but over all the cars grade is -C. I consume a lot of gasoline and I'll be selling it next year. Unless you have so much money to spare on gas, easily broken parts and all that, then go for 3.