They provide engineering students scholarships from 7500 to 15000 dollars per year to about 100 students in an engineering freshman class of 1500. Do you think I have a shot at one? They award based on test scores and grades.
GPA: 3.78/4.00 UW, 4.22 W
SAT: 1520, 780 M, 740 CRW
ACT: 34, 33 M, 36 S, 35 E, 32 R
AP (sent to the school): 5 on Psychology, Music Theory, and Physics 1, 4 on US History
Generally, As in science and math classes and As or Bs in Humanities/Social Sciences
Almost always honors and ap courses when available
You have very good stats.
That said, UIUC is often lousy with merit even for very good stats…because their eng’g school has a ton of top stats students. They don’t just base merit on stats alone. Many high stats students get nothing.
Are you instate?
There’s a reason why Alabama has so many Ilinois high stats eng’g students. They go for the money. With your stats, you’d get $25k per year plus 2500 per year. So essentially free tuition. Apply as a back up. State of the art eng’g facilities.
DD is a senior engineering student at UA. More OOS students than in-state, and plenty from IL. Very strong pool of engineering students. As stated, great facilities. Very good faculty. Honors programs in various sizes - some highly selective, and some have a sizable number of students in them.
My son had a 36 ACT, 4.7 GPA (4.0 UW), 800 SAT2 scores and a full load of AP/honors that amounted to 4 semesters UIUC credits. He received a 1-year non-renewable engineering merit award. I’ve seen reports of students with similar stats who received no merit awards at all. Based on that, plus messages I’ve received and information from friends, my guess is that the larger and 4-year scholarships are not awarded based upon objective measures. Unless you are an under-represented minority, had an amazing essay and extra-curriculars, a child of a major donor, know someone who is politically connected, or all of the above, then I would consider it very unlikely to get a 4-year merit award. Also, I would suspect that it’s more difficult to earn any merit award if you apply to a more competitive engineering major like CS, Mechanical or Bio.
Here is last year’s thread: http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/university-illinois-urbana-champaign/1960463-official-class-of-2021-uiuc-merit-scholarship-awards.html
Hopefully more merit aid opens up to students with strong academic credentials. Given the new budget, recent fundraising and the large endowment, it almost seems criminal not to attract more high performing in-state scholars with merit aid. I’d love to see where scholarships are actually going. I sure hope it’s not like the admissions scandal a few years back.