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.
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