<p>UIUC has a 92% retention rate, so I doubt that’s the case. </p>
<p>UIUC has a high acceptance rate because it is a public school. It’s as simple as that. Public research schools usually have an acceptance rate of 50-70%. The reasons are straight forward: public schools are much larger than private schools, and must matriculate (and thus accept) many more students. For example, UIUC matriculates 10x the number freshman than MIT each year. For UIUC to have the same acceptance rate as MIT, it would need 10x as many applicants. There just aren’t enough applicants to make that happen.</p>
<p>Also, public schools have a lower percentage of accepted students that matriculate. Think of the perfect student living in Chicago: 4.0 UW GPA, 2400 SAT, president of every club in high school, etc. Where will that student apply to college? Probably the top schools (say, Stanford, MIT, etc.) but she’ll also send an application to at least one in-state school (in this case, the best in-state school is UIUC) as a safety / low cost option. As a result, flagship public schools have to accept a higher percentage than private schools (which are rarely used as safety schools).</p>
<p>Private schools also get more trash applications. There are thousands of people that apply to Harvard with below average stats ( <1500 total SAT, <3.0 UWGPA). Those students have zero chance to ever be admitted but apply anyway either as a novelty or because they don’t know any better. Those applications artificially deflate the acceptance rate at the top schools. Public schools rarely get applications like that.</p>
<p>Finally, public schools also tend to have more non-competitive degrees. Programs like Agricultural Science, Education, Social Work, Physical Therapy, Library Studies, Hotel and Restaurant Management, etc. are not as competitive (in terms of supply an demand) as engineering, business, pre-law, etc. The former group are primarily found at public schools while the latter group are the bulk of most private colleges. If someone applies to a public schools with an intended major of “Social Work”, there is more pressure (both because of a lack of applications and because of political pressure) to accept that student even with not-so-stellar scores. </p>
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<p>As someone who has never lived in Illinois and has no connection to UIUC - every engineer in the country - and probably the world - knows what UIUC is and respects their program heavily. Graduate schools (both engineering and non-engineering) look very favorably upon your UIUC degree. Most non-engineers know the University of Illinois from sports, but do not know it’s engineering ranking. Then again, most non-engineers really only know MIT and their local schools for engineering.</p>