im starting and need it to experiment

both cameras are head to head similar in all aspects - i am a nikon fan but i love the performance of canon too - have heard that canon is good for wildlife shooting or more outdoor shooting and nikon has more indoor advantage - but no proofs - go with the brand you like  - look out for good deals. 

kit + 50-250 lens should be great for canon - while kit + 55-300 for nikon

I'm more like Canon person so I naturally recommend t2i. t2i is an awesome compact Rebel series camera with great video quality. Great for MF and AF both, with many availability of affordable lenses. If you going to get just 2 lenses to begin with, then I would have a good kit lens 17mm to 55mm, and a telephoto lens, maybe up to 250mm. If you can afford it, then I would recommend the first lens with F2.8, but for telephoto, I think you can go for ordinary 4.0-5.6 would be okay. But the selection of lenses are really depending on what sort of photos you often take, such as macro, portrait, landscape, wildlife and on and on. Hope this helps!

14% better image quality is not head to head. The only good point for the T2i is the video.