UIUC vs GATECH

drusba
Tue, 22 May 2007 10:53:51 +0000

Both are highly regarded universities for engineering. In engineering, both will generally teach you the same things. Major differences go mainly to factors not involving engineering:


Gtech is in the heart of Atlanta, giving you access to a large city (and quick access to a large airport); hilly, mountainous areas are nearby outside the city; weather is generally mild to hot (some cold days in its fairly brief winter and a rare snow can happen). UIUC is in small conservative, midwestern cities (Urbana and Champaign, total population combined is about 100,000), land is flat all around, and once outside the cities, you have farmland and trees fifty miles in any direction; winters are long, basically December through much of March, and you can have many snowy and very cold days and springs are often rainy.
Gtech’s campus is somewhat stark (lots of concrete) but not as bad as many profess; UIUC’s is pleasant with lots of grass, trees and old buildings.
Gtech is mainly engineering and science and has close to a 4 to 1 male to female ratio. At UIUC, engineering is just one of many colleges there, the biggest is LAS, and UIUC has about an even male to female ratio.
Most students at Gtech come from Georgia or other nearby southern states and thus it has a definite southern flavor. Most at UIUC are from Ill and mainly Chicago area, definitely midwestern flavor.
Dorm rooms for freshman are small at UIUC and not much bigger at Gtech. Both have large presence of fraternities/sororities. GTech is genreally less expensive for out-of-state and tends to offer more merit money than UIUC.
Gtech has more of a reputation of “weeding-out” students in many freshman/sophomore classes, although neither is known in engineering to have any significant grade inflation
Lots of employers recruit on campus at both and both have good co-op and internship programs, although in that regard Gtech’s is close to the best as it treats its co-op/internship programs as a major selling point for recruiting students and thus devotes significant effort and money to its programs.