<p>Aside from the US News ratings and the price for in-state tuition, please tell me why Illinois should be the first choice for someone interested in engineering?</p>
<p>Those are exactly the reasons I chose it. Plus the fact that I feel completely at home there and after one year still have complete confidence in my program. Really if you like another school better and feel you would be happier there, than go. I really don't have any other reason to say I wanted it besides the two you have listed and the two I have listed. Why do you ask tho? That's pretty general.</p>
<p>I am trying to get a sense of the real value of the program. I know that it is a big school with 1000 kids in a Chemistry lecture and I am trying to see if the education that one gets from being an engineering major is really going to be superior to other programs and if so, how. Will someone graduate from this program knowing more than from other programs, having better technical skills than from other programs or having better problems solving and design skills? Any ideas?</p>
<p>Alright for 1) There aren't many huge classes. Those classes are also broken into discussions for real learning. 2) The classes get smaller and smaller by process of elimination and switched majors. The technical skills are built from the general cirriculum foundation being used in the 300-400 level courses. My ChBE 431 uses every skill from every previous ChBE class in the sequence. It is all used to build a factory from the ground up. And by senior year chemEs have the skills to do this.</p>
<p>Students from U of I are known to have the most technical of any college nearby. All of the corporations, business firms, companies come from miles around b/c they know U of I students are the best and are made that way. Even during the recession when many of the companies stopped sending out recruiters too almost all colleges, U of I still had a large showing at its career fair.</p>
<p>U of I is literally the best in the area and why anyone would go out of state for an engineering program (besides maybe job opportunities for Aero to go to FL or Texas) when it is a great education for a low cost is beyond me. Yeah there are some big classes but I think that makes you a better student than to have someone holding your hand all the time.</p>
<p>These are just my thoughts tho. This is all of course pretty general stuff and probably won't answer what you had in mind. Is there a school you're comparing it against? What are the job opportunities? Cirriculum? Major? Your query is still pretty vague. Better technical skills as compared to what? UMich? Rose-Human? Same type of teaching? Differently taught? Just a few questions you might want to think about.</p>