<p>So currently I'm a junior at Purdue. Amd I'm strongly considering U of I as one of my top favorite grad schools to go to. I know the Electrical Engineering department is great. But I don't know much about U of I in general, the campus life, the town of Urbana-Champaign, etc... Any help?</p>
<p>Well, both schools are Midwestern and part of the Big 10… can’t see how they’d be too different. Greeks dominate the social scene here (it’s like 25% but it seems more than that). Lots of weekend (and weekday) drinking; lots of school pride. As for the electrical engineering part, I’ve only taken the beginning level class in that department. A good number of my TAs and undergrads were internationals from Asia. The facilities at Everitt are well kept, clean, hot-beds for interesting projects, and the university is even in the process of building a new building for the EE department. EE, along with CS and Civil, seems to be one of the most represented departments in the Engineering college. As a grad student, your experiences will be very different however.</p>
<p>What do you wanna know?</p>
<p>I was wondering how Urbana-Champaign was like? How’s the city?
Also, do you know if UIUC has professors who specialize in nanotechnology?</p>
<p>UIUC just recently finished a giant, brand new nanotechnology building that is a mix of the EE, ChemE, and ME departments (maybe a few more that I am forgetting). There is also NanoCEMMS, the Center for Nanoscale Chemical, Electrical and Micro-Mechanical Systems.</p>
<p>As far as the town goes, it feels a little less “college towny” than West Lafayette (in my opinion), but not by much. There are about 120,000 people living in the area, then surrounded by a depressing amount of corn. There are plenty of bars close to campus, but all of my favorites were off campus by a mile or so. The town has basically any basic amenity you might need. In my opinion, the only thing that West Lafayette has over Champaign was that Champaign is SOOOOOOO unbelievably flat compared to the area surrounding Purdue.</p>
<p>There’s a fantastic $90 million building coming up just for EE (John Bardeen Hall). You won’t need the rest of Urbana and Champaign once that thing gets completed (around 2011-12).</p>
<p>Also, nanotechnology is one of the main focuses of EE at UIUC because the department’s strongest legacy is in semiconductor technology (having been associated with the inventors of the transistor, LED, and integrated circuit) and in physics is condensed matter/solid state physics (#1 ranked department for that in the world). You’ll mostly find the nanotechnology professors in the Micro and Nanotechnology Lab (MNTL) but also Beckman Institute and Materials Research Library (MRL). There’s about 15-20 of them within the ECE department itself and more in physics and materials science.</p>
<p>Thanks for info,GShine. Appreciate it.</p>