I have been accepted at UIUC (Engineering- Undeclared), University of Iowa (Chemical Engineering), and Iowa State University (Mechanical Engineering). I plan on either studying Chemical or Mechanical Engineering. I know that UIUC is ranked higher than the other two schools, but there are a few factors that may keep me from attending. I like Iowa’s campus and surrounding area the best, followed my Iowa State, and Illinois pulling up the rear. Also, the size of both Iowa and Iowa State suit be better than Illinois. Iowa especially just seems like a place I can see myself spending the next 4+ years of my life.
Lastly, my parents will be paying for the majority of my education, and I want to put the smallest financial burden on them as possible. I live in Illinois so the cost of attending Illinois (Tuition & fees + Room and Board) next year comes to $31,642. Iowa would cost $27,622 and Iowa State would cost “only” $19,828.
Is Illinois worth the extra cost over these schools or would it be better to save money and go to what may be a lesser program? Thank you for the help!
For that price difference, I would go with UIUC over Iowa or ISU.
You need to talk to someone at UIUC to see how easy/difficult it would be to move from undeclared to your desired field of engineering. The student environment will be more competitive at UIUC so it depends also on where you will thrive best. Iowa State does host one of the larger career fairs every year. Although UIUC is ranked very high for engineering, go where you will excel.
Normally, small differences in rankings should be completely ignored… But UIUC is easily top 10 in engineering, whereas the others are not even top 50. That being said, undergraduate engineering curricula are pretty much the same, so I don’t think the quality of the education would be any different. You will get a solid, similar engineering education at all 3 of these institutions.
While UIUC is slightly more expensive, I imagine the job recruitment opportunities will be significantly better. My advice would be to strongly consider UIUC, unless you think you just would be really unhappy there. You should go where you believe you can thrive.
Have you visited UIUC?? You claim that it may be too big, but it’s not much bigger than Iowa State and U Iowa.
Total enrollments are:
UIUC: 44,000
Iowa State: 35,000
U. Iowa: 31,000
These are all very large schools, and when they get that large, I don’t think you would notice a difference 9,000 out of 44,000!
Iowa has a pretty compact campus though, Illinois’ campus is about over 2x the size of Iowa’s.