The University of Illinois Urbana - Champaign

Date: Mar 21 2006
Major: Mechanical Engineering (This Major's Salary over time)
The University of Illinois at Champaign is a good school as long as you are in the right department. The engineering school is one of the best in the country, along with the school of business. If you are in either of these fields, and you want a public university, this is where you need to be.

The campus is probably one of the best looking campuses in the US. The landscape and architecture are awesome. I looked at other engineering schools like UM-Rolla, and the campuses there were boring as heck. This campus is great. I guess the other reviewers have only walked a block off campus if they say there is nothing to do. As long as you have a car, you can get to a number of shopping and other complexes. Champaign/Urbana has a population of about 120,000 without the 40,000 students at U of I, so there is plenty to do.

If you choose one of the good programs at U of I, be ready for a challenge. I coasted through high school but U of I is a lot tougher. I really have to work to maintain a good GPA. Don't come here expecting a community college difficulty. One of the few problems I have is foreign profs that don't speak english very well. I didn't do so hot in calc last semester because my prof was chinese and so was my TA. It's hard to learn calc when you can barely understand your teacher. The TA situation is hit or miss. I have had some wonderful TAs who were very helpful in the class, and I have had some TA's who have no clue what they are doing. Thats the problem with Grad Students teaching a subject.

I wouldn't suggest coming to U of I unless you are going to be in Engineering, Business, Architecture or a science like Biology or Physics. Most of the other majors would be just a waste of money. You can go somewhere a lot better for a lot less money to do Speech Comm or English. The other majors have a good reputation. If you want to do Business at U of I, you might think about doing community college for your gen eds because you can't start business classes until your junior year anyway. So you might as well save some money and get an associates degree in the process.

Even though I'm still an undergrad, I know grad students here at U of I who really like the programs. U of I has good engineering, business, law, and chem grad schools. The engineering and law schools are both top 10 for public grad schools.

Overall, I really like the University of Illinois. I know some people from New York might not like the simplicity of Illinois, but it's a really good school. I moved to Illinois from Phoenix, AZ, which has a population of 5 million people, a few years ago and it takes some time to adjust to the corn and soybean fields, but you get used to it. There is still a lot of things to do here and a lot of partying if you are into that kind of stuff. The University of Illinois is a good school for those going into the right majors and are willing to put in some effort and hard work.