<p>I am applying to chem eng. schools and hear very little about UICU except what I see on the rankings lists and some very negative reviews by students on several forums about the school in general, not engineering specifically. I am looking at Purdue, GT, RH, CW, Olin, Rice, Cornell & CM. Any info/opinion about UI?</p>
<p>Get ready for some irony… Don’t believe everything you read on forums. UIUC is very highly ranked and respected worldwide, and I can tell you that I had a wonderful experience in my time there.</p>
<p>+1 Only have ever heard great things about their engineering school.</p>
<p>It is a very strong program and the university is so large that you can find a community that suits you on campus.</p>
<p>There are plusses and minuses to every school, and most people have real perspectives on at best only a few. Further, no school is perfect for everyone, and the unhappiest are the most vocal. </p>
<p>I think UIUC is a great engineering school, that’s why I came here. What are you looking for, or what negatives have you heard that worry you? That way we can help you decide if UIUC is best for YOU.</p>
<p>cosmicfish, all this time I never knew you were a fellow Illini. Go figure, haha.</p>
<p>boneh3ad - I came to UIUC for my doctorate, and attended two other schools for my BS and MS. So between you and me we have both the grad and undergrad viewpoints covered!</p>
<p>Madmc, where in Heaven’s name did you hear that U Illinois-CU Engineering was subpar? That’s just completely untrue. Check your sources.</p>
<p>Thanks for your feedback and this is embarrassing to admit, and maybe because I live 3 hours from Purdue, but I had never heard of Illinois high esteem in Chemical Engineering until I saw they consistently are in the top ten in Chem. Eng. and while the rankings may not mean much, that was my starting point for consideration for applying. I have visited Purdue, GT, RH and Vandy, and thought initially the larger campus would turn me off but realized the Engineering Programs are like their own insulated world on a much larger campus. I visit Illinois this Friday for Eng. Day.</p>
<p>madmc95, that should not be embarassing. Most high school seniors are darn lucky if they have any realistic view of the relative strengths of more than a couple of colleges - there just has not been that many opportunities to examine it and waaaaaaay too much propaganda out there. Heck, even by the time you get your undergrad you will probably only have a rough idea of the best schools for your actual discipline (and little idea of most of the “good not great” schools in it), and until you get into grad school (or a professional position with a strong interaction with academia) you will have little opportunity to really even form your own opinions - until then you are mostly just relying on what other people say.</p>
<p>So relax - this is the value (I think) of the various ranking schemes and sites like this! They give you lists to use as starting points. Then you winnow them down using whatever criteria are important to you (cost, graduation time, Icee™ machines in the cafeterias), and then you visit them to see which schools/departments/professors are best for you.</p>
<p>I will pitch one thing for larger campuses while I am on, however - larger campuses mean both more departments and larger departments. The first means more opportunities to pick an alternative if (as many do) you decide to change majors, the second means more opportunities to specialize during your undergrad years. Most employers seem to prefer students with classes or experience in particular areas, and in engineering it is pretty difficult for small departments to offer those classes or experience in many areas. Larger departments give you more opportunities to find and learn a specialty that you genuinely want to pursue for a career.</p>
<p>wording structure of my first inquiry was wrong. Never meant to indicate Illinois was subpar, in fact based on my research it is always in the top 10 engineering but the name had never come up from my advisor or our school’s engineering day or in conversation… When I kept seeing it on every chem. eng top list I decided to check it out. Maybe it is an odd geographic anomaly as I do live in a subpar IQ state. There is this one site where students were blasting the school in general, but it had nothing to do with engineering, so sorry for the confusion.</p>
<p>I don’t know what site this is you speak of or what the nature of it is, but trusting undergraduate students from other schools is not a good way to judge a particular school. Even current undergraduates opinions at that school are iffy due to not knowing their situation (grades, interests, personality, etc.). The only way you could really judge based on that is if the opinion is overwhelmingly one way or the other based on unbiased sampling, which forums do not represent.</p>
<p>The best way to judge a program is based on its re</p>
<p>Not sure what happened to my previous response, which I was posting this afternoon. It apparently somehow showed up as being posted yesterday and only posted part of the response. Weird. Anyway, the full response is below:</p>
<p>I don’t know what site this is you speak of or what the nature of it is, but trusting undergraduate students from other schools is not a good way to judge a particular school. Even current undergraduates opinions at that school are iffy due to not knowing their situation (grades, interests, personality, etc.). The only way you could really judge based on that is if the opinion is overwhelmingly one way or the other based on unbiased sampling, which forums do not represent.</p>
<p>The best way to judge a program is based on its reputation in industry (e.g. The quality and quantity of companies who recruit from that program) and the desirability of graduates to graduate schools and other universities as faculty. For actually choosing a school, you have to weigh those with all the other personal factors like size, atmosphere, climate and any other criteria that factor into “fit”. That part is highly personal.</p>
<p>boneh3ad, CC has been having technical issues for a week or so now. For awhile, every time I posted, the same time showed up. So my posts occurred farther and farther down the page. Some people are still having issues.</p>
<p>Yeah, for a few days my browser was saying CC was an attack site.</p>