Haha well atm no one cares about next year’s basketball season. First we need to see who gets to cut down the nets in a few weeks. My husband just told me KU’s two best players are out of the Bug 12 tourney due to Covid. I guess they’re lucky they’ll get in either way and that it happened now but still who knows if they’re about to have an outbreak and be the first team to get the boot under the covid rules. Also teams are already on their way to Indy for their bubble quarantine. What a crazy year!
Back on the map for 1 year and then…poof…no one can find them (UIUC) on the map again. 
That could very well be! At the rate my kids are going I may never have a college b-ball team to root for. No Ivy sports this year and Texas what a shocker was up there for a second this year but blew some bad games and people there only care about football. Since it looks like this one isn’t going to Illinois either I guess we just have to bide our time and wait and see who our allegiance goes to for the next 4. I still owe my husband a trip to Allen Fieldhouse though because you haven’t see college basketball until you’ve seen a game there!
Well, UVA(which is on the OP"a list) is the reigning national champion and the number 1 seed in the ACC tournament.
VA Tech and GT are 3 and 4 seeds in the ACC tournament. Strange year.
- That statement gets an *. No championship was played last year.
The UIUC campus is like every other Midwestern campus - flat, some nice older buildings, especially around the main quad, flat, a lot of agriculture around it, a decent downtown in Champaign, flat, a great library, flat.
Did I mention flat?
I spent 7 years there, and I don’t know what part of the campus you visited, and I don’t know to what you are comparing it to, but I don’t know where you get “dreadful”. Maybe you walked around the part of campus town frequented by undergrads. Somewhat boring, somewhat flat, overall a bit meh, yes. Horrible? No.
I am sorry to say, but there is no real difference between Purdue campus and UIUC campus, except that UIUC has some additional very large spaces, like the different quads, while Purdue’s spaces are much smaller. Same architecture, same structure. Indiana University, Bloomington is pretty, though, as is Bloomington in general.
But no, if you want a dreadful campus, you’d have to go to a place like UC Irvine.
VTech is a nice campus, but it ain’t Northwestern or Cornell.
However, a person should not attend a school at which they do not fee comfortable. A school where you are happy >> a “high ranked” school which depresses you.
Still, it is good to remember that your perception is your perception, not objective reality.
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So true. I happen to agree (as did my D) that UIUC does not show well, at all. And, not a fan of NU’s campus either…I went there for grad school, and still live close.
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Yep, it’s all about fit and sometimes it’s also about what people (a parent) might put in a kid’s ears. I have a friend who has constantly talked so much negativity about a school all because her older kid didn’t get in that when her younger kid got in, he wouldn’t look at it. She can’t go back now and convince him to look at it, which is sad because it has a great program for what he wants.
My son for whatever reason couldn’t stand Wash U. Although it is in a great town and a beautiful campus. Really no rhyme or reason so we crossed that off our list. And none of my kids liked Wisconsin. Too compact and hilly, or as others would say too dense. But ultimately scenery is just scenery and you don’t really pay attention to much of that once you’re there if you’re really there for the courses, friends, etc. It’s everything else and what you gain. I agree, Purdue, Illinois, Indiana, pretty much all the same - flat. Iowa isn’t as flat but nothing so great i Iowa City either. We lived there for 5 years. It’s not even near a major city without having to travel almost 4 hours to get there.
Oh, for sure. I’m just saying that “horrible” is seriously overstating it.
Now, if somebody said that it was so boring that they would fall asleep walking across the Quad, I couldn’t truthfully say that they were wrong. though on Hash Wednesday, there would be other reasons that a person would fall asleep crossing the Quad…
I like NU - my kid did a few summers there, and I thought it looked pretty. However, considering that I was working at UIC at the time, my bar was set pretty low (if you want to talk about a hideous campus, UIC fits the description).
Yep - my perception - i agree.
For whatever reason, I thought both IU and Purdue was nice. The perception of Purdue is not as nice as IU but I thought it was nicer.
So it is true we all think differently.
Wash U - another gorgeous campus!!!
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I haven’t seen Purdue or UIUC but have seen Indiana and WUSTL and thought both campuses were nice. I find UVA and Virginia Tech both very nice and felt very lucky to have those potential options as a Virginia resident.
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and W&M is gorgeous and I actually hear Christopher Newport is very nice.
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Yes, both attractive campuses. W & M is very pretty and Williamsburg is interesting if you’re a history buff.
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I have Freshman DD at UIUC, my son graduated UVA and my daughter graduated VT, all in engineering, so I read thru this thread with interest at the variety of views, we also considered Purdue Vs UIUC and visited Purdue. My conclusions follow. I’m extremely glad DD is at UIUC (she was accepted at VT and Purdue engineering also) Assuming cost were equal for these schools, Purdue is out… actually I was not comfortable with the environment on campus or the communications/recruitment from Purdue. I don’t think Purdue would have been nearly as “good fit” for us, there was nothing about Purdue that was better than anything about UIUC for us. I agree with most of the comments here about UVA and VT. My graduates got good DC Area job offers at job fairs on campus. UVA is very prestigious but it’s not as good an engineering school as VT.
I’m now a UIUC fan, we have visited the campus 5 times since DD was admitted fall 2019 and we love everything except that it is very far from home and it is very flat. UIUC north Quad is far far more impressive than any engineering buildings at VT or UVA. Blacksburg and Charlottesville have their character (and beautiful mountains) but Urbana-Champaign is super nice, shopping, etc, really love it. I love Land Grant universities and public Flagships, where VT is Land Grant and UVA is Flagship,… UIUC is both! Honestly, before my DD decided to apply to UIUC, I had not really even heard of it, I am a UC Berkeley Alum. Even in COVID, DD has connected with so many clubs and activities at UIUC, has a job at the physics research lab, and a summer fellowship, is on track to finish a year early and get the Masters degree in EE her 4th year, and has a merit scholarship that makes it more affordable than VT. Since arriving on campus, DD has been getting COVID tested 2-3 times per week and has stayed negative.
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Glad your daughter really likes UIUC. You say it is more affordable though in your case than VT. That is not the case for OP, who says cost is a consideration and that VT and UVA are 50-100 percent less expensive for their family than UIUC.
This has been a very helpful discussion.
Though ranking is not a key criterion, it would be interesting to understand the ranking for undergrad in computer science (this is different from overall computer science ranking that includes undergrad and grad).
If someone has subscription, please post the ranking of the following schools: UVA, VT, UMD, Purdue, GMU (UIUC and Georgia Tech are both #5). This is the link-
https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/computer-science-overall
UIUC is top five in CS. Whether any of the top five are worth the higher cost is questionable, but IL OOS is still less expensive than any of the privates you’ve listed. And is just as good.
Ooops, I thought this thread was current. Sorry.