<p>Any thoughts for an OOS student trying to decide between the two schools?</p>
<p>UIUC hands down. It is TOP 5 in the nation in engineering and the facilities are first rate. That said, if NU gives you better financial aid then go with NU.</p>
<p>^perhaps you shouldn't be so sure. NU's material science and industrial engineering & management sciences are in the top-5. It also has a better BME program (maybe UIUC doesn't have it).</p>
<p>I loved NU's engineering program. I would have given it serious consideration over virtually any other program, except for MIT.</p>
<p>UIUC doesn't offer BME, and has a BE program that is only 3 years old.</p>
<p>burn that usnr ranking thing. the ranking doesnt mean anything.
by default you will not be any better than the student from another school that ranks 5 places or even 20 places below urs. the ranking is just a reference on how much you will be tortured academically and how much school resource you are probably not gonna exploit. if you do wanna get a job after graduation, just go to any school you like, and make the most from it. like, work with professors, publish papers, get some field experience.</p>
<p>and go to uiuc if you wanna spend the next 5 yrs next to farms and nothingness. but well, they party hard there to compensate it.</p>
<p>A professor told me this about public school engineering vs. private school engineering. You'll find that some of the highest ranked engineering schools are public schools - Umich, UIUC, Berkeley, Georgia Tech, etc. But the rankings are done in a way that doesn't necessarily reflect where you will get the best education. </p>
<p>At UIUC, the ranking is very high because the curriculum is very rigorous - in fact, it is basically a gauntlet - if you manage to survive, then congrats, you pass. The gauntlet is difficult enough that anyone who manages to pass is a pretty good engineer. Unfortunately, due to the sheer size of the program, you're usually left to fend for yourself and it's far more competitive. </p>
<p>At a school like Northwestern, you get a great support group, your professors are extremely accessible, and usually majors are small enough that you will get to know most of the people in your major and form some pretty good study group bonds - which effectively negates the competitive feeling. </p>
<p>Also, you should consider grad school placement. I read that out of a class of 272 CS majors from Berkeley, only 1 made it to MIT for graduate school. My friend just graduated from UIUC as a ChemE, and he was one of only 5 kids in his entire major to go to a good school for graduate school (he went to Stanford). On the other hand, Materials Science here at NU usually only has 20 kids per year, and last year we sent 5 to MIT, and the rest into industry or other great schools. It's the experience that counts, and at NU, your experience and your education will be excellent, and (in my humble opinion) probably better than a public school's.</p>