UArizona Honors vs UIllinois at Urbana-Champaign LAS Honors for Physics/Astronomy

Greetings all,

I’ve essentially been able to narrow it down to these two after getting waitlisted from Berkeley. I aspire to get a PhD in astrophysics.

I absolutely hate the hot weather in Arizona after living here all my life, but the honors college seems to very helpful. Also, I won’t have to take out loans for either school nonetheless fortunately.

With grad school in mind, I believe that both are great options for physics and astronomy, Im having trouble discerning which will offer me the highest potential research and potential to be published. Ultimately though, I’m choosing the school most based on which appears to have better opportunities (and it seems like they both have plenty).

If anyone has any input whatsoever on these schools, I would greatly appreciate it. If i continue to be unable to find academic, significant differences, I guess I’ll go to less factors like dorm quality, etc.

If both schools are affordable, and you hate Arizona weather, I’d say UIUIC.

What other schools are on your list where you have Honors College?
What’s your parents’ budget and the net price* for each?

*net price = (tuition+room+board+fees) - (grants+scholarships)

@MYOS1634 It’s honestly just these two at this point (UA Honors and UIUC LAS Honors). In this case, my parents are fortuitously willing to pay entirely for these two universities (because they are the cheapest I got into.

Have you visited UIUC? If not, time to go for an overnight visit!
Attend two classes: freshman physics and freshman English/Humanities Honors. Contact Honors to ask if they have tours, if you can meet professors. Eat in the cafeteria (not jsut for the food, but to see if students are social and friendly, if they self segregate…), stay in the Honors dorm, visit the library, read the college paper to see what concerns students and how articulate/respectful they are in expressing their concerns.

@MYOS1634 That sounds absolutely incredibly; however, I’ll be unable to visit UIUC until I actually have to choose :((

So… I’m essentially just relying on statistics and potential qualifications to get into Harvard or Berkeley for Grad school. Thank you so much though, and I’m ecstatic to hear any more of your relies.

Do you ean you don’t have time to go?
Typically high schools allow seniors to take days for college visits…