When we attended the engineering tour our tour guide ( a senior), admitted to never having attended a single sporting event. He said he spent all of his time studying. Curious to hear from engineering students (or parents of students) who have balanced their studies with outside activities, especially club sports and intramural sports.
Engineering at any school will take a lot of devotion. My son, at Cal Poly, told us the intensity came in waves, where he was occasionally all consumed. He managed to play intramurals a few seasons, hike frequently, hold down a job, and get good grades. I’m certain students at his school would say that all they do is study. It’s really a matter f efficiency at any school. @boneh3ad could probably comment specifically on Illinois.
Hey what’s up, I’m a current Engineering double major student here.
I don’t think most people spend all their time studying. Work smarter, not harder, definitely applies to college. I think you can definitely balance a reasonable classload with time for outside activities. There’s a pretty active pick-up soccer scene here and it’s a great way to meet people! The only exception in my opinion is people who try to double major or graduate early and don’t have many credits coming in, because you’ll start racking up 18 credit hour (or even more) semesters and will be swamped by work.
Our basketball team is meh and our football team is god awful, and it’s been like that all 4 years I’ve been here. No surprise people aren’t going to games.
When I earned my BS in mechanical engineering at the University of Illinois, I missed a grant total of 2 home football games, 2 home basketball games, and attended one or two away games each season in each sport (as well as a number of other sporting events frequently like volleyball and wrestling). I was a Block I Block Head for 3 years as well. Despite all of that, I graduated in a standard 4 years.
It sounds like the College of Engineering needs to get some new tour guides.