So admissions are out, and as a current student I’d like to congratulate all of you for coming this far.
If you didn’t get into UIUC CS or were waitlisted, take a deep breath; you will survive.
There are plenty of other schools that have very good CS curriculums. For example any Big 10 school has at least a respectable, if not flashy, CS department.
But that’s beside the point, because no matter where you go to school, there’s a ton of self-learning in CS. The fundamentals of CS don’t change at UIUC or Illinois St. If you’re motivated and passionate, and put effort into learning, you’ll have no trouble finding a job/internship/grad school/etc. During my internship last summer, I met people from all sorts of colleges that I’d never heard of nor considered applying to them.
TL;DR: Where you go to college doesn’t determine what your life will be like, what you get out of it will.