@Gator88NE can’t agree more than that, as had dilemma for younger one past spring, Northwestern vs UMich (OOS). Ended up Northwestern.
.
In our experience they attempt to meet the instate school cost by virtue of scholarships, meeting difference between OOS cost and instate cost. So at the end of the day it is same donut in different packaging.
@PPofEngrDr One factor that drives up the competitiveness of engineering admissions at UIUC is the large number of OOS applicants. I notice that Undeclared is prominently made up of in-state students, which again, may make it a bit less competitive.
Looking at the 2018 numbers, we had 151 undecleared engineering students, 123 in-state and only 28 OOS (13 international students).
Compared this to CS (BS program), where out of 1012 students, we have 542 in-state and 470 OOS (215 international students).
OOS/International students may be not be as welling to choose the Undecleared major, vs CS, Computer Engineering, ME or ISE (CompE/ME/ISE are also popular BS choices for OOS students). In fact, Computer Engineering (BS) is over 50% OOS students…
Side note, about 30% of CS majors are female (302 out of 1012).
@theloniusmonk “applying for CS/Engineering typically means you’ll need to evaluate the school for job opportunities”
It pays to look at the salary surveys for CS. Unlike rankings, the salary survey results tend to better aligned with the most rigorous programs. To get high average salaries, a schools grads have to be able to pass some very rigorous coding interviews.
Here are the salary surveys for Carnegie, UPenn, MIT, UMich, Berkeley, Cornell, U of Illinois, and Northwestern.
https://www.cmu.edu/career/documents/2017_one_pagers/scs/BS_SCS_One_Pager_2017_%20rev.1.18.pdf
https://www.vpul.upenn.edu/careerservices/files/2017_Senior_Survey_FINAL_PDF.pdf
https://capd.mit.edu/sites/default/files/about/files/GSS2017.pdf
http://career.engin.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/30/2018/08/annualreport1617.pdf
https://career.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/pdf/Survey/2017CompSci.pdf
https://www.cs.cornell.edu/undergrad/cscareers/placementreport
https://ecs.engineering.illinois.edu/files/2018/03/Engineering_Report_2016-2017_FINAL.pdf
https://www.northwestern.edu/recruit/our-students/assets/beyond-northwestern-digital-20171.pdf
@Gator88NE following links give you some realistic view of what happens year over year (freshman to senior year)
http://www.dmi.illinois.edu/stuenr/class/enrfa17.xls
http://www.dmi.illinois.edu/stuenr/class/enrfa18.xls
According to those data, CS major statistics are
Fall'17 Fall'18
Freshman 69 64
Sophomore 187 169
Junior 297 271
Senior 492 508
Total Undergraduates 1045 1012
Somehow the CS count adds 100+ students from Freshman to Sophomore. Most of those are due to UE, few from PREP, few from transfer from other non-UIUC colleges. Similar addition happens from sophomore to junior.
Class size also changes drastically from Junior to Senior, assume most of them are transfer from other non-UIUC colleges as at that point UE, PREP would have been weed out.
CS class started with ~65 students at freshman level balloons to ~500 by the time class become senior (8 fold increase). This seems very odd and implies how cut-throat freshman admission become.
@PPofEngrDr Some Freshman come in with AP/IB/AICE/DE credits and are classified as Sophomores. That’s likely the reason behind the low number of freshman students.
It’s standard for engineering programs to have larger senior classes than junior. One reason is the requirement to take more than the standard 120 semester credit hours. CS at UIUC requires 128 credit hours. Internships and co-ops can also extend a students time as a senior (and most internships are awarded to rising seniors).
re #58 I agree that the days when a young woman could waltz into CS on the basis of nothing more than good math grades and an 800 SAT score are over. (That was close to what Carnegie Mellon did back in 2006, because high school girls just weren’t likely to do the sorts of things boys did in high school, even though they were very capable.) Obviously everyone has to tell some sort of story in their essays, but honestly I think my older son just targeted good CS schools and said “I’m a computer nerd.”
Yes, a skew toward higher class standing can be due to frosh bringing in AP or other credit. Also, there may be 5th year seniors adding to the number of seniors.