The Illinois Institute of Technology

Date: Dec 31 1969
Major: Computer Science (This Major's Salary over time)
Those of you who are applying to IIT, please do a thorough check of other universities you are applying to before deciding to come here, if you get in.

The CS department here is pretty good. Majority of the research is going on in Information Retrieval, Distributed systems and Peer to peer. The faculty are pretty good, pretty well-informed and friendly. The course structure is good and you can balance your courses well through your semesters.

Funding-wise and wrt availability of on-campus jobs, TA and RA positions, the situation is pathetic.

IIT itself overall has poor funding and job scenario. The campus is pretty decent, not too much to talk about. The administrative staff are not very friendly and supportive. They can get hard on students in certain situations, more than necessary.

Also, the facilities are not that great and not too great a planning goes into maintaining the university and improving it. For example, new students have to literally do a Sherlock Holmes to find the restrooms in the campus center. The tennis courts were all bumpy, rough and uneven and the management let the students play on such courts through the summer and has taken up its renovation now at the end of summer, when that should have been done much earlier.

Nevertheless, the campus does have good points to it. The local train line passes right through campus and that makes downtown very easily accessible. Also, there is a 7 eleven store in campus, which is quite helpful (though it is a bit on the costlier side).

Coming to safety, the location of the campus makes it quite an unsafe place in the night. Though the public safety here is making efforts in keeping it safe, they are somehow coming up short.

Finally, if you are looking to stay on-campus, firstly getting an on-campus apartment is pretty difficult. The only advantage of on-campus apartments here is the obvious one of being close to everythin in campus. But, the apartments themselves are not that great and can do with some significant improvement.

All in all, IIT is not really a great university to come to. It has the obvious advantage of being in Chicago, which is an awesome and beautiful city.

Hence, please make a thorough check of other universities and come to IIT only if you believe that it is truly better.