Grab the all east pass. As a student its reasonably priced. Both mountains have they're pros and conn's. Either one on a good day can be a good time, and on a bad day, they can both be hell.
SR's park is probably better then sugarloaf's. They have larger jumps and bigger rails. The superpipe is good about 4 days a year. The day it opens, the one day mid winter that despite walls of blue ice, it actually has perfect shape, and the two days that it warms up in the spring. The park is fun when its nice out, features are well maintained and a session is going off. When february hits and the park crew gets lazy and pissy, its not so good. Skiing wise, its sunday river, not much vertical, lots of groomers, and more out of state duche baggs then you can count. (90% of ASC's paying market and the only people that upper management really cares about)
Sugarloaf is a really good time when there is snow. If you can get up and hit the snowfields on a powder day, it some of the better resort skiing in the east. It can be brutally cold though and warm afternoons with sub-zero nights can mean very skied out icy trails first thing in the morning. The groomers dont look so bad on those days. The park is a lot longer then SR's which means you get a lot of hits in a lap. The pipe never seems very good, hence the reason the CVA spends a month every year training for pipe in breckinridge. People at sugerloaf are a bit more local and seems to be a bit more friendly. It takes a little more for the massholes to make they're way up to maine's more northern region.
If you do get the all east pass though, attitash is pretty close, making the hike to killington early and late season tends to be worth it, and there are always a few good events down at mount snow that I found myself traveling too.
