My kid was accepted to UIUC and is considering it but transportation (from the DC area) is a concern. Getting to campus from OHare and vice versa seems cumbersome. It sounds like the easiest options are an expensive connecting flight into Champaign or a bus. The bus could be hard to time especially if a flight gets delayed and it may be hard to get a seat at the holidays and breaks.
Or is there some organized way to catch a ride to and from OHare with another student who may be heading up or back from their home in the northern Chicago suburbs? Back in the stone ages when I went to college (not UIUC), there used to be a ride board where people would post ride offers and requests to various places and the passenger would pay for gas.
Would love to hear experiences or advice from those who have/had OOS students there. And we’re hoping to do a campus visit or admitted student event and we can test out the transportation situation then.
When we toured last spring, our tour guide was from Chicago and mentioned the bus. It seemed that there were lots and lots of students from the Chicago area so I expect that carpooling would also be an option once students meet instate students with cars.
You want to look for flights to ORD (Chicago O’Hare) for best price and for catching Peoria Charter (shuttle bus that takes about 2.5 hours from airport to campus if no traffic). Just google Peoria Charter to go to their website for shuttle schedule. They pick up and drop off daily both directions (anywhere from 2 to 4 departure times on most days but increased frequency on peak travel days such as finals week, holiday breaks, beginning and ending semester weeks). They only open up online booking 30 days ahead of planned departure date. If your student enrolls, you want to mark that 30-day booking window on your calendar as the seats fill up fast for holiday breaks. If seats sell out or flight is delayed, an Uber is about $200 - $250 depending on time of day. My son shared an Uber with 3 other students on the way back to campus when the SFO-ORD flight was delayed by 2 hours and they missed the last scheduled bus. (SFO-ORD is a very popular route for tons of enrolled students from California Bay Area so very easy to find/identify other UIUC kids.)
A couple of times I was able to find really attractive fares to CMI (Champaign-Williard Airport) that usually connects at ORD or DFW (Dallas Fort Worth), so put in CMI when you search for airfare to see if you get lucky. CMI is just 10 - 15 minutes away from campus and Ubers run about $15 from CMI to campus. The ORD/DFW to CMI leg is a very small plane operated by American Airlines with overhead bin accommodating only handbags and normal sized backpacks. You have to leave rollers at the ramp before entering plane and pick them up at the ramp unless CMI is your final destination and you can retrieve from Baggage Claim.
Can I ask how your son’s experience has been, how was the adjustment coming from Calif? Has he been good with the weather? I also didn’t realize there are so many Calif kids there. I was trying to find some to hear about their experience. Would love to hear how he likes it if you are willing to share! Thanks.
My son’s experience has been very positive. We are from Northern California Bay Area, closer to San Jose than to San Francisco, but there are definitely more flights to ORD from SFO than SJC. He went to a large STEM public high school known for its top ranking and high test scores so there has been a good track record every year of kids accepted to UIUC from his school and other schools in the same school disctrict. Weather is nice August - early October and it would just turn cold quite suddenly in October. He took the cold weather in stride and he was fine with just a big warm jacket and gloves, although last week he ordered a balaclava (ski mask) from Amazon due to the Arctic front causing unusually cold weather in North and Northeast states and could be felt all the way down at Urbana-Champaign. Weather turns nice again after mid-March spring break (sometime earlier) and just in time for Spring Break and Admitted Students campus tours. It gets very hot during the summer months and it is humid, so choose dorms with air conditioning if possible.
Feel free to PM me if you have any specific questions. Which part of California are you at?
This short video made by a student (now an alum) specifically compares the weather between California and Urbana-Champaign. He also discusses what travel day looks like, what he recommends packing and bringing and how it was tough to adjust at first, mostly because he was trying to transfer into CS (which is now no longer possible if you are not directly admitted into CS) and feeling stressed out all the time, but once he got into CS, it was a great experience.
Students trying to get into CS at UIUC needed a 3.75 college GPA just to enter a competitive admission process (i.e. 3.75 did not assure admission to the CS major, but was just the minimum to apply). That was a recipe for feeling stressed out all the time until getting admitted. Perhaps he did not know the CS admission criteria before choosing to enroll there over UC-whatever or CSU-whatever that he should have gotten into with direct admission to CS.
