Transfer to UIUC business?

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
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Hey there. I’m currently a freshman at Northwestern and for a few different reasons I’m considering transferring to UIUC’s business school next year. After doing a little research I can see it has a pretty low acceptance rate, and I’m guessing it’s even lower for incoming sophomores, so I was wondering what my chances might be.

I’m an econ major, so I’ve taken or am in the process of taking the macro and micro requirements already. I also see that calc I and calc II are required. At NU we don’t have a class titled calc II, although this fall I took a class that was a step above the calc I class. I’m a bit confused on whether or not they’ll consider the math requirement fulfilled. Hopefully someone here may have some insight, although that may be something I’ll need to contact the school about directly to find out. Principles of Composition is also apparently a requirement, and we have no such class here. The description, however, sounds very similar to our freshman seminars, and I will have taken one and be in the process of taking another while applying. Again, it’s another murky area though. Any insight would be great if possible. I have the language requirement down.

My college GPA after one semester is 3.5. Not great, but hopefully not enough to count against me. ACT is 32, high school GPA is pretty good, though we aren’t given an unweighted version. I will say that my senior year had noticeably lower grades than my other years, thanks mostly to laziness/senioritis. Nothing horrible though, no D’s or anything. Activities are pretty solid in high school, although kind of lacking in college so far. Looking to get involved in a few more ways if possible, but I’ve been rejected from a hell of a lot of clubs so far. Also rejected from several work study jobs. All I have is a bit of service stuff, and I’m going to join the comedy club (which does not reject people thankfully), and hopefully a consulting club (which does reject people, so it’s no guarantee).

Anyway, sorry if I rambled a little bit. Hopefully someone can provide some insight.

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Hi there! I transfered to UIUC business a couple years back as a second-semester sophomore actually. Check out transfer.org - I know for a fact that UIUC’s admissions uses this to assess transfer equivalency between courses. I know you have to fulfill a number of requirements before you can be considered for UIUC business so make sure you follow those closely. I would also highly recommend reaching out to an admissions counselor over at UIUC - can’t tell you how much stress it saved me to get a simple head nod from admissions on some assumptions I was making. If you fufill all the pre-reqs and get a high GPA (>3.8), you should have a very good shot, considering you’re already at NU as well. Clubs and such can supplement a 3.5 as well.

I know quite a few people who went to NU and ended up in business roles - make sure you take a close look at what you want to get out of your school, career-wise, if that is a major driver for you. For example, NU is notoriously very good at consulting while UIUC is considerably better at ibanking/accounting.

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Hey, thanks for the reply. How much involvement do you think is necessary? At this point I’m only involved in a community service type thing, which is about 2 hours per week, as well as a stand up comedy thing, which I plan on getting more involved in this quarter. Also going to do an IM sport in the spring. I was hoping to get involved in some other things, but it’s been insanely competitive to get into clubs here.

And yeah, I think U of I would definitely fit my career interests, although I do recognize that NU does open some doors that a lot of other universities don’t.

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UIUC is definitely better at accounting (considering that NU doesn’t offer accounting).
I wouldn’t say that UIUC is better at getting you in to IBanking, however, though agree that NU places much better in to consulting.