I’m a rising senior and live in illinois.
unweighted gpa: 3.82
(3.83 freshman year, 3.67 sophomore year, 3.92 junior year)
weighted: 4.45
ACT: 31
EC’s/other interests: 3 years of marching band, I have been playing piano for 8 years, 110 volunteer hours, and started learning guitar recently.
There’s really no benefit paying triple the tuition to go out of state. If you’re in IL, you have a great school at UIUC. Plus there’s a lot of uncertainty right now…economically, politically, and that won’t be going away anytime soon. You don’t want to get established at a distant school, only to find out it’s suddenly unaffordable, and your classes don’t transfer.
@karyy21 - The University of Washington is a strong state school with a beautiful campus. UW has a pretty diverse student body including international students, big sports and a fun marching band plus active frats and sororities. As a state school, they are not going to provide you generous aid/merit and unsure if finances are an issue.
Are you planning on applying to Foster, Comp Sci or Engineering? All of those “schools’” within the UW are very competitive and your stats are below their admitted students. For general admittance, you are within the range, but with Covid it may be that students will be staying closer to home and that may increase the competitive pool/stats next year - who knows. They do love full pay, highly qualified out of state students and it is my understanding that the majority of the waiting list movement was for full pay, qualified out of state students vs in state students.
I know several West Coast students that picked UIUC vs the UW, as they didn’t get direct admittance to the UW computer science/engineering programs and had opportunities at UIUC.
So much depends on your major and financial situation plus a point or two increase in your ACT would make for a stronger app too.