<p>I’m going into nuclear engineering and I have a list of about 12 colleges right now. I want to reduce the list to 8 or 9. So I want to find out some negatives on each college to help narrow it down. I can find positives for Illinois all day long. Its the negatives I can’t find easily. So what are some negatives?</p>
<p>I’d also appreciate any advice if you care to give any.</p>
<p>O and I am OOS… just for the record.</p>
<p>My only complaints about U of I are that the campus isn’t really that pretty compared to some (doesn’t matter for me that much though), and that the tuition is kind of high (even for in-state). Also, note that your tuition is going to be 4,000 higher than what they have listed since you’re going to be an engineer.</p>
<p>I am an alum of Illinois in engineering. I agree that there are lots of positives. So, I won’t go into those. Here are some negatives: 1) Most of your first two years of course work will be large lectures with TA discussion groups–chances are good that you won’t know any real professors, IF you don’t create your own opportunities; 2) the financial aid at Illinois stinks; 3) the wind and cold are bitter in Champaign-Urbana–I don’t know why, but it just feels really cold there (and I lived in the north of the state); 4) the football team.</p>
<p>wildwoodscott- I would be interested in hearing your positives on Illinois engineering since you are a graduate. I may start a new thread but any input you can give like: did your degree from IL give you an advantage when looking for a job? are you still in the field of engineering or did you branch off into other fields? would you say that IL has a good reputation in the working world?</p>
<p>It has been 20 years since I finished up my schooling at UIUC, but some things don’t materially change. Plus my son is currently a sophomore there, so I get some feedback through that channel.</p>
<p>I started out in Nuclear Eng - but I’ll assume you have read all of the various reports that indicate Illinois is a fantastic engineering school. Negatives would include (and please note, some of these are not a big deal to most people)</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Big campus – the bus system helps, but walking from the six-pack to the Engineering campus is not a 5 minute jaunt</p></li>
<li><p>Size of general education classes can be intimidating, so you will need to be self-motivated if you want to get 1:1 time with a professor (primarily through office hours). No one will make you go and it can be easy to slack off (true of any large school, not just Illinois)</p></li>
<li><p>The South Farms when the wind is blowing from the south</p></li>
</ul>
<p>I’m a current freshman from Illinois who doesn’t go to U of I, but nearly all of my friends do so I’ve been there 10+ times. I got admitted for business and chose not to go there for many reasons. I’ll give you a few. The last being the most surprising and important in my eyes.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>The location is pretty dull. If you have any desire to be near a medium to large sized city you’re out of luck. Of course it’s a college town so there’s always going to be something to do, but it just seems like there’s something social missing in Champaign. On top of that, I think the campus is fairly ugly. I recently took the train to Champaign and walked from the train station to the dorms. I couldn’t help but think how gloomy and boring the campus seemed. I really don’t have any friends willing to argue with me about the appearance of the campus.</p></li>
<li><p>Like the previous poster said, the campus isn’t much fun to walk or travel across. I don’t know tons about this except that I have friends who are very far away from each other and consequently don’t see each other too often and hate getting to class.</p></li>
<li><p>I’m going to tread lightly on this one because I’m not sure how true it is. Recently I was eating lunch with a social active friend on campus and he explained to me how the campus is surprisingly segregated. He said it wasn’t really purposeful, but coming from the diverse high school that we came from he felt that students all flock towards others in their race and religion. He said he never really thought about it and expected it until he got there and noticed. The dorms themselves carry stereotypes that I’m sure many are familiar with and he said they’re pretty accurate.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>The bottom line is that U of I is one of the top places to study engineering in the country and that it has a solid social scene. But the school isn’t for everybody and I’m not sure what type of personality you have. The truth is that I have tons of friends at U of I and they’re having a great time, but I’m pretty sure almost all of them would have gone somewhere else if they had the money or had been accepted to more desirable schools. Most of them went there because they didn’t have much choice.</p>
<p>Taxi1113-Post well taken. Just out of curiosity did you go to a school that has a pretty campus since that seems to be important to you? Is it a smaller school? Turning down IL school of business you have a had some pretty good options. Are you willing to share where you ended up?</p>
<p>I actually haven’t started school yet, which would explain why I was able to visit U of I during the start of first semester. I will be starting second semester in January at USC in Los Angeles. In all honesty, having a pretty campus was not that important to me at all. USC has a reputation for being located in a bad neighborhood, but the actual campus is gated and very very nice, but it didn’t really play a part in my decision at all. A lot of people also assume that USC is a massive, and it is fairly big, but it has about half the undergrads as U of I and I liked that. I was choosing between USC and Michigan and USC gave me a lot more financial aid and fell in line better with my aspirations (working in the business end of the entertainment industry). Also, USC gave me enough financial aid so that it was nearly the same price as U of I’s expensive in-state business school tuition.</p>
<p>My problem with U of I appearance is because I think it’s generally a somewhat ugly school. It didn’t really play a part in why I didn’t want to go there, but it’s something I acknowledged quickly. Feel free to PM if you have any more questions or need any advice.</p>
<p>Sorry, chriscollege, I just haven’t been back to this post.</p>
<p>To answer your questions:</p>
<p>1) Yes, I believe that especially in the Midwest, an engineering degree from Illinois is an advantage in the job market.</p>
<p>2) I was about 5 years in the engineering field and then branched out into other endeavors. I am glad that I studied engineering because it disciplined my mind in how to think.</p>
<p>3) Yes, I do believe that Illinois has a good reputation in the working world. Remember, it is generally true that your college (and its faculty) help a lot in getting that first job. After that, it’s a lot more up to you and what you do with the opportunities you’ve been given.</p>
<p>Oh wow surprise to hear all the negative comments about University of Illinois.</p>
<p>im not a student, but i am applying this year.</p>
<p>when i visited last spring, one thing i found annoying was that the administration, faculty, etc. all seem to have this vision that it is such an honor to be attending U of I, and that they care more about how people view the school than the quality of their education and the happiness of the students. during the presentation, multiple speakers felt like peppering all their speeches with “well, we’re a top 10 public school…” and that got on my nerves. it is a great school, but they gave me no reason to attend the school other than telling me how they perceive their own school.</p>
<p>nonetheless, it has an incredible business school and it will be tough for me to choose between it and indiana (where i got a much better vibe and enjoyed the campus much more).</p>
<p>^ My counselor also told me that when he visited UIUC, they repeatedly bragged about having the “best this”, and the “biggest that”.</p>
<h1>1 Downside… it is very flat!</h1>
<p>Anyway, now to my opinions:</p>
<p>1) To comment on the segregation comment, I really didn’t see any of that in my 4 years there. There is one set of dorms that has the reputation of being sort of an “ethnic” dorm, but I think that is more of a self fulfilling prophecy than anything else. ISR has a lot of engineers flock to it because it has that reputation and people naturally gravitate to like-minded friends, so when FAR/PAR get a reputation for having a lot of blacks or Asians or whatnot, the students exacerbate the “problem” because they follow along with the stereotype. The classes not segregated or anything like that, there is just that one dorm that has a reputation, and even that is a little bit of a stretch. Plus if you look at places like the 6 pack, you have a very mixed collection of people.</p>
<p>2) As for all the talk of being a top school from the recruiters: that is their job. They get paid to talk up the school and convince students to go there, and that is a major selling point. Everyone wants to go to a top school if they can. You will find a similar sentiment at every school that has a good national reputation.</p>
<p>3) Travel isn’t that bad. I walked everywhere, even in the cold weather, and had no problems, and took buses when I didn’t feel like walking. If anyone has friends that say they didn’t see each other a lot because of distances, it is most likely because they didn’t really want to see each other. I had friends that lived literally all over town, and had no problem seeing them or meeting them somewhere. It really isn’t that big of a deal. You will get similar travel issues at every Big Ten school, or any other major 30,000+ student school for that matter. It is a long trek to most things, but really isn’t that bad.</p>
<p>4) I think it is pretty misleading to say things like “but I’m pretty sure almost all of them would have gone somewhere else if they had the money or had been accepted to more desirable schools.” You make UIUC sound like a dump that is not desirable at all right after calling it one of the top places in the world to study engineering. So which is it? I would say that its engineering school being what it is, that it is a VERY desirable place to be. There isn’t a day that goes by that I am not thankful for the education that I got from the engineering department there. I think it prepared me very well for my internships as well as grad school. I would highly recommend the engineering program to just about anyone.</p>
<p>Anyway, this thread is about the negatives, so here are my negatives:</p>
<p>1) It is flat, flat flaaaaaaat. No hills, few trees. Central Illinois is really a dull landscape.</p>
<p>2) The althletic department doesn’t give a rat’s *** about the students, and panders solely to the donors, so a lot of times we got screwed on ticket prices and availability, especially to neutral site events. Still a lot of fun though.</p>
<p>3) Outside of the engineering department, there is too much Chicago influence for me. Don’t get me wrong, I have lots of good friends from Chicagoland, but when you left the engineering department, it felt like as much as half of the rest of the student body was from that area, and I would have preferred a little more diversity there. Within the engineering department it was even still a high proportion, just more watered down by international students and people from farther away.</p>
<p>bonehead, in response to your number 2, i didn’t say these were recruiters, they are administrators and faculty members that i saw present and met with. and yes, while a selling point of a school is “we have the best _______”, what’s more important for me is “this is what we can offer YOU”, and those are two very different things.</p>
<p>Administrators = recruiters</p>
<p>When a student visits, it is the job of the people he/she visits with to present what the school offers. To many people, the rankings indicate the quality of education that the school can offer YOU. I am not sure what else you are wanting them to present. Are you looking for them to tell you about undergrad research opportunities? Study abroad opportunities? Social life? If they didn’t mention any of that, I am surprised (not counting social life).</p>
<p>The fact is, however, that most people (right or wrong) consider rank/prestige to be an important indicator of what a school has to offer.</p>
<p>Coolbreeze- do you really think that there is a school without negative. This post is just listing some honest opinions that are to be taken with a grain of salt and from your own perspective. You need to visit to get your own vibe.</p>
<p>Thanks wildwoodscott for your input…much appreciated. Bonehead…always appreciate your keen insight. Good luck in grad school.</p>
<p>In response to boneh3ad, </p>
<p>1) I was simply repeating what I had heard from a good friend of mine. I’ve heard it from a few people, but he went into more detail on how he was surprised at how segregated he found it. I definitely agree that "students exacerbate the “problem,'” but that was exactly the point that I was trying to make. It just kind of seems like students accept certain stereotypes there and that only feeds the negative image. However, like you said, there are positive options. I signed up for housing at U of I in case I ended up having to attend, and I definitely would have chosen to live in the six pack. I only hear good things about the social environment there. But the poster asked for negatives and I did my best to give them a legitimate response from what I had heard.</p>
<p>2) I have to say I felt exactly the same way as jax. I interned for a local Illinois state politician a year ago and when we were having a discussion about how U of I should always be striving to attract the highest quality students, she said that when she spoke with one of their reps in Springfield he told her that they don’t need higher quality students because they’re already a top university. I found that to be extremely obnoxious. When I spoke with people at the business school, I always got this impersonal vibe that made me feel alienated, even after I had been admitted early. When I visited Indiana, I met with a rep who made me feel like IU really takes care of their business students, especially their direct admits. Since those were my two safety schools and Indiana gave me enough aid to make the tuitions virtually the same, I thought why wouldn’t I go to Indiana over Illinois? Illinois has a superior accounting program, but beyond that I thought Indiana would better suit any other undergrad major, especially marketing. I didn’t end up going to either, but had I had the choice, I would have chosen Indiana.</p>
<p>3) I’ll just trust you on that one because I don’t know enough about to make an argument and you’re probably right.</p>
<p>4) In response to the comment that you found “misleading,” I thought it was obvious when I typed it, but it must not have been. I have many friends at U of I, but not all of them of in the engineering program. My first statement: “but I’m pretty sure almost all of them would have gone somewhere else if they had the money or had been accepted to more desirable schools,” and my statement about how it’s one of most desirable engineering programs in the country are not mutually exclusive or contradictory. Even though it’s a desirable program, that doesn’t speak to how my friends personally felt about attending the university, espcially if you consider that not everyone I know is in the engineering program. While I have friends who are in the engineering program who wanted to attend other schools and would have, I also have friends in the business school who would have attended other universities.</p>
<p>The truth is that the engineering program is a bit of a different animal than the rest of the university, but you would expect that it would have some similarities to business in the sense that it’s fairly prestigious and competitive. I would hope that it draws students from locations beyond the Chicago metropolitan area like I believe engineering does, but I’m not sure if that’s true. And like you said, the university as a whole is full of tons of Chicagoans. To summarize, I was just trying to address the negatives about the university like the OP asked. If they asked for positives, I would have had a list of those as well.</p>
<p>I also should mention something because it’s extremely ironic. As I was typing this, my friend enrolled in business texted me telling me that he’s going to try to transfer out as soon as possible. Weird.</p>
<p>Taxi,</p>
<p>I am not trying to attack you. Sorry if it came off that way. I was just trying to offer my own side of things as a grad since I didn’t quite see things the same way you had depicted them in your post.</p>
<p>I can’t really speak from experience about business other than the fact that it has a great reputation. I did room with two business guys for 3 years of undergrad, so I had a lot of exposure to the students, and I can definitely see where your claim that they don’t need top students since they are already highly rated is reflected in what I perceived to be a somewhat disappointing student body. On the other hand, its a lot harder to quantify the concept of “top student” in business. In engineering, it is easy… who has the highest math scores and took lots of sciences in high school and did well. You admit those kids. In business, there really is no high school curriculum that can capture whether someone is going to be a good businessman, so I guess in the school’s defense, there really is no way to know how good a student will be in business until he starts there.</p>
<p>However, I have never really seen IU as having much different of a program. All the people that I know that went to the Kelly School of Business (sometimes ranked HIGHER than the UIUC School of Business) seem very similar to the ones from Illinois. It seems to me that the main difference in your mind is just how the administrators treated you. That is certainly a valid point, and I used similar criteria in choosing a grad school (got into Georgia Tech but went to Texas A&M, and one of the factors was the way I was treated by faculty on my visit). Personally, I am a huge advocate of going to the school where you feel comfortable and where you feel that you personally can excel rather than basing it on rankings, so kudos for using some common sense.</p>
<p>I just mainly wanted to try and clear up some things you said because in my time at UIUC, I didn’t see them nearly as negatively as you portrayed them in your negatives.</p>
<p>Also, I wanted to add something to the segregation issue. Maybe your friend noticed something that I didn’t, which would be even more likely if your friend is of some minority race, as I am not. However, things like FAR/PAR being mostly filled with black and various types of Asian students never really bothered me because, in my mind, it was no different than the fraternities that are all black, or going to the Asian American house on campus. I kind of felt like a lot of the people who moved in there did it to be a part of their own culture rather than separate themselves from the other groups. To me, there is a distinction there, though maybe there isn’t to others. It certainly would make an easier to transition to college if you get into a dorm that has a lot of people you are more comfortable around, especially on a campus that has a noticeable dearth of black people. It always seemed that while Asians and Indians were well represented, and even Europeans in the engineering school, there was a conspicuous lack of blacks, especially given how many people feed in from Chicago.</p>
<p>boneh3ad, don’t worry, I didn’t take it as an attack. I just felt that I owed some extra explanations because I made some bold statements. My friend is actually white, but our high school was extremely diverse (50% non-white), and I think he wasn’t used to an environment where everyone flocked to their own race, culture, or religion. I think it’s also an issue because most of my friends are extremely social and like to go out and drink a lot. I’m not saying that you or most engineering students aren’t like that, but I think they’ve found that people definitely form social cliques, and that a lot of the people who party together are kind of the same. For people coming from the Chicagoland area, it can make for a dull experience when you’ve already been living that life through your high school years. To be honest, most of the engineering students I know don’t go out and party much. They’re pretty much focused on academics, so they care less about the homogenous environment, and more about the course rigor and quality of professors.</p>