Tufts, Penn State or Illinois for engineering?

cosmicfish
Sun, 05 Feb 2017 15:48:01 +0000

good engineering school with smart people around, a real campus feel, and not too far from the northeast.

Well, both UIUC and PSU are good engineering schools with smart people around. I’m not sure what “a real campus feel” means, and distance is easy to figure out, so I’m going to ignore those.

Illinois is harder and more theoretical, in my experience. It is also more entrepreneurial, it seems every year people are starting businesses right out of undergrad. But these are relatively small differences, you can get a great education at PSU with lots of theory and entrepreneurs.

Both are huge campuses with distinct identities. PSU is a huge football school, UIUC is more about basketball. Both have a LOT of partying. PSU is typically a top-25ish program in most rankings, UIUC is typically a top-5ish program, which can matter when dealing with people unqualified to directly ascertain your expertise.