Best and worst Big 10 towns-chapter 12-for Jiff

Colleges & Universities A-Z University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
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<p>BIG TEN</p>

<p>Best Town: Madison<br>
Comment: "As cosmopolitan as any Midwestern town could hope to be. Mad City, by reputation and reality. And the people take on the personality of coach Bo Ryan -- with a smirk and a half-smile as if you say, 'What, you doubt us?'" </p>

<p>Also receiving votes: Minneapolis, State College, Ann Arbor, Indianapolis (for the Big Ten tourney). </p>

<p>Worst Town: Champaign </p>

<p>Comment: "Champaign has never done anything for me. It's flat and has no natural selling point -- no river or hills or lake or, well, anything."</p>

<p>Forde</a> Minutes: 40 names, games, teams and minutiae making news in college hoops - ESPN</p>

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<p>how could champaign be worse than west lafayette? i heard it is awful if you aren’t 21, whereas you only need to be 19 in champaign-urbana. shouldn’t columbus be one of the good too?</p>

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<p>Tell it to Mr Forde. I’d agree on Purdue myself. And the students there are not very bright yet still nerds.</p>

4

<p>Pat Forde is an absolute moron and a disgrace to the profession of journalism. I don’t know how ESPN keeps him around.</p>

<p>Honestly, Champaign is probably somewhere in the middle of the pack as far as Big Ten towns go, as I would admittedly enjoy places like Madison, Evanston, Columbus, and Ann Arbor more than Champaign purely from a town standpoint.</p>

5

<p>And based on the very low 4-year graduation rate, you get to enjoy madison much longer than champaign. Quit ■■■■■■■■ on competing college sites barron. That’s just bad form.</p>

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<p>Also, where it counts in college, UW-Madison trails in most programs in business and engineering compared to its peers…but hey, some loser on espn thinks the town of Madison is great. Woot!</p>

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<p>Another thing: Illinois has a better basketball team too.</p>

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<p>Gotta love how Weber and his guys seem to own the Kohl Center.
Go Illini!</p>

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<p>Saying they own the Kohl Center is a bit much, but we definitely have had more success there than any other team (save Wisconsin of course).</p>

<p>Still, purely as a town/place to live, I would choose Madison over Champaign. The only thing that sucks about it is the weather. Bratwurst and beer? Yes please!</p>

<p>Now, back to important things…</p>

<p>Let’s beat the crap outta some Buckeyes on Sunday!
AP Top 25 here we come!</p>

10

<p>Illinois won with our best player on the sidelines. Our season ranking and RPI>>>>>Illinois.<br>
“The Illini are 2-14 in their last 16 trips to Madison. Wisconsin has owned Illinois of late, winning six of their last seven meetings. As the coach at Illinois, Bruce Weber has a losing record against only two Big Ten teams – Michigan State (6-7) and Wisconsin (6-8).”</p>

<p>As to engineering–UW is still in the top 15 and ahead of many peers from UVa to UCLA. Business is just as good as at Illinois which puts everything into accting while UW has good programs across the board and produces far more corporate leaders tying Harvard.</p>

<p>Not to mention anyone with the right connection could bribe their way into Illinois. That’s class.</p>

<p>And anyone can see why people would be in a hurry to get out of Chambana. My friends who went to Illinois undergrad were in shock how they wasted the best years of their life in Chambana when they could have been in Madison.</p>

<p>But I’ll stay away as long as Jiffy stays off the UW board. Control your own.</p>

11

<p>barrons:
Who cares if Leuer was on the bench? You lost. Get over it. Hopefully he will be healthy for the Badgers’ trip to Champaign, especially because I generally like seeing other B10 teams do well (minus Iowa, Indiana and Michigan of course). Still, RPI is not a totally accurate way of doing things as evident by the fact that there have been top 20 teams in RPI left out of the tournament before. Wisconsin is a quality team, but don’t act all high and mighty because I think over the past few weeks, Illinois has proven that they are also a quality team. Additionally, Mike Davis for us played ill, so that is one of our primary “big” men and rebounders that wasn’t at full strength either. Injuries happen. Good teams can overcome an injury more often than not.</p>

<p>And Madison is a great town and I have enjoyed every time I have visited, but that doesn’t mean that those of us who went to Illinois wasted our best years.</p>

<p>Balthezar:
Last time I checked, Wisconsin was actually ranked better than UIUC as far as overall university ranking is concerned. There are a few choice programs at UIUC that are better, but overall, Wisconsin is a high quality school and is easily in the top 4 overall schools in the Big Ten (Northwestern would be the best with Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin all fighting over the next 3 spots).</p>

12

<p>Actually Bone, Wisconsin and Illinois are tied at 9th on USNWR’s listing of Best Publics. Illinois is 5th to Wisconsin’s 12th in overall Engineering, and while tied at 13th overall in Business, Wisconsin only tops Illinois in 3 of the 12 listed business specialties at Marketing, Quantitative Analysis and Real Estate.</p>

<p>As for the snide reference that Barrons continues to make to the admissions process at Illinois, for prospective students, the process has been scrutinized, and reviewed to eliminate any hint of undue influence. Given the fact that a spotlight has been focused on the program, you can be sure that if an applicant has been admitted to Illinois, he/she has merited the offer, just as I’m sure they do at Wisconsin.</p>

<p>Overall Illinois Students (25th-75th Percentile Range) have a slight edge in ACT Composite at 26-31 for Illinois compared to 26-30 for Wisconsin. But in Business the mid 50% of 2009 admits had an ACT composite of 28-32, and in Engineering, the composite was 30-33.</p>

<p>As indicated by the rankings, both Wisconsin and Illinois are top-notch public universities besting many of the best private institutions in many programs. My son has been accepted at both, and would be proud to attend either, but I see few programs at Wisconsin in the areas of business and engineering that are especially attractive compared to Illinois, especially in his stated area of interest in Aerospace Engineering.</p>

<p>We’re looking at both institutions seriously, and doing everything to reduce the costs associated with attending both. We’re now awaiting the offers of financial aid, both merit and need, to arrive at a bottom line for attending.</p>

<p>Barrons, it’s great that you’re a booster for Wisconsin. I’ve learned a lot from your posts there. But just because you have a vendetta with Jiffsmom (I think she carries things to an extreme too), is no reason to essentially trash-talk on the Illinois site. People are free to post anywhere, I just thought you were better than that.</p>