The University of Illinois Urbana - Champaign

Date: Nov 01 2009
Major: Electrical Engineering (This Major's Salary over time)
The engineering department, along with physics and chemistry, is light years ahead of the rest of the university. You're probably inclined to think I'm just being an arrogant engineering major—you'll understand (and agree) if/when you come here. Honestly, I wouldn't bother coming here for other majors. It is not so much the faculty in those other majors (most are at least OK, some are truly great), but the utter mediocrity of the students. Most of them are just rich little Chicago suburb kids. They spend their four years getting drunk and end up getting some mediocre 35k/year job at some unknown company. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but shouldn't we be a little more ambitious in life?

Students in engineering and the sciences (excluding life & social sciences) I've found to be much more intelligent and hard working. This is probably true anywhere—scientists/engineers are the nerdiest of any university—but the difference at Illinois is particularly staggering. This seems to follows from the university's rankings: it's generally somewhere around 30-50 ranked in most disciplines but nearly all of its engineering departments are top 10, with at least half of those in top 5, and 2 or 3 are #1. I don't know why this disparity exists, but that's the way it is (perhaps the past leadership of the university really liked engineering and science to the detriment of other fields). Anyway, because of it, the different majors attract students of vastly different quality.

Looking at the big picture, 30-50 out of the hundreds of universities in the country isn't too bad, but do try to get in somewhere else if you're interested in liberal arts etc.

As far as opportunities go, they're aplenty. I'm doing an internship in Europe and have done humanitarian projects and built robots that were exhibited to hundreds of people. You're generally in a good position to get a job at a good company or get into a top ranked grad school as an Illinois engineering grad. Despite the surrounding city leaving much to be desired, there are interesting things to do whether you prefer to go party or discuss atheist philosophy.