University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Campus Visits: Share Your Tips & Recommendations

Did you recently visit University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign? Share your experience with the community! Post your review in the comments below.

Some ideas for what to share:

  • When did you visit?
  • Where did you stay? Would you recommend it?
  • Where did you eat? Did you try any local specialties?
  • How did you get there? What’s the best transportation mean to get to-from the campus?
  • What was the campus vibe?
  • What did you think of the dorms?
  • What are some must-see things in or around campus?
  • How were the school facilities?
  • Did you like it more or less than you thought you would? Why?
  • Did anything surprise you?

We’d love to hear any tips or recommendations you can share for people planning their UIUC visit!

Two restaurant recos: For delicious deep dish pizza go to Papa Del’s and for “Burritos as big as your head” go to La Bamba. If you are visiting during sports season, there is a lot of enthusiasm at football and basketball games.

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I attended UIUC back in the dark ages, and my son went there for Science Olympiad competitions in 2017. My general impression from 2017 was that the school was starved for resources as evidenced by the lack of new construction and general condition of the academic buildings. Granted, we were not in any of the engineering buildings and the school has since built a new home for the business school, but compared to other Big10 schools I’ve seen like UofM, MSU and Purdue, it generally looked run down. After college tours with my son I started referring to UIUC as a run down Purdue.

UIUC is in the middle of nowhere, so you will likely get there by car. There is a small municipal airport serving Champaign/Urbana, but I don’t know about the frequency of flights.

While visiting the campus, check out the underground library. It is built below grade with a center courtyard to provide light.

I have no information about dorms since I lived off campus. Note that there is a huge greek contingent on campus with many large fraternity/sorority houses.