<p>Hello all,
Recently I visited all four of the colleges listed in the Thread title. I was not impressed with Cornell or CMU and I really want to get out of state. Also, if I attend Berkeley EECS as an undergrad, it will be hard to get into their grad school. Consequently, I'm currently leaning toward UIUC for Computer Science (I wasn't accepted at CMU for SCS but for ECE) with a 12000 merit scholarship which is cheaper than all of the schools listed. Would it be wise to give up an Ivy League/private/other elite engineering public school for Illinois. Will I be able to get similar recruitment opportunities from companies such as Facebook, Google, Microsoft (I know they recruit the most from Illinois), and Apple. Also, if I don't want to go directly into industry, is there good grad school matriculation to other top engineering schools like MIT, Stanford, CMU and Berkeley. Thanks a lot.</p>
<p>I’ve heard from a relatively neutral party that UIUC is supposed to be notably better than Cornell for CS, despite similar rankings.</p>
<p>I also know that the majority of CS grads at UIUC don’t go directly to grad school (I think only about 30% do). Though I’m not sure how well the ones that do pursue it fair. Job placement seems to very good, although on the fact that Microsoft hires the most CS graduates from UIUC, I think that that’s due at least in part to the fact that UIUC just has a bigger student body overall. That’s not to say recruitment isn’t still good, though.</p>