<p>At dinner tonight, my cousin who was accepted into UIllinois, told me he debated applying to UMich and UW-Mad, but was told they were reaches for him. It ends up he chose to apply to both of them anyways, and got in to both of them. UIllinois on the other hand, deferred him, and eventually admitted him. </p>
<p>After he was admitted to his schools, his counselor told him that UIllinois is statistically harder to get into the UMich and UW-Mad. </p>
<p>Wow.</p>
<p>U of I was pretty brutal to my high school this year–several students with 31-33 ACT and top 5% rank with top classes were rejected from the engineering school. However, there were students with lower stats who were accepted.</p>
<p>Maybe they were protecting yield rates? and anyways, acceptance rate isn’t always the best way to gauge how good a school is</p>
<p>Then it’s a good thing that the OP never even mentioned that</p>
<p>Engineering and Business school are very difficult to get into. The rest of the school not so much</p>
<p>UIUC CoE is as hard to get into as Michigan CoE. Wisconsin is slightly easier for Engineering.</p>
<p>For Arts and Sciences, Michigan is slightly harder to get into than UIUC or Wisconsin.</p>
<p>UIUC is very open with its admission stats. Profiles of ADMITTED freshmen in the top three most selective colleges in 2009 were:</p>
<p><college>…< ACT >…< SAT >…<class rank=“”>
ENG … 30-33 … 1920-2150 … 92%-98%
BUS … 28-32 … 1860-2080 … 91%-98%
LAS … 27-32 … 1860-2110 … 88%-97%</class></college></p>
<p>Overall … 27-32 … 1840-2100 … 86%-97%
[U</a> of I Admissions: Freshman Admission Requirements](<a href=“http://admissions.illinois.edu/apply/requirements_freshman.html]U”>Page Not Found, Illinois Undergraduate Admissions)</p>
<p>UI still has massive budget issues and is an unstable state government. Buyer beware. UM and UW are more stable by far. Admissions is just a small piece of the overall picture. UM and UW are hiring. UI is borrowing to cover the lack of state $$$$.</p>
<p>U Illinois, U Michigan and U Wisconsin are all quite large with undergrad pops exceeding 26,000 and total students number over 40,000 when you add in grad students. None is particularly selective when measured on an overall basis. </p>
<p>Acceptance Rate, ACT 25/75</p>
<p>65%, 26-31 U Illinois
50%, 27-31 U Michigan
57%, 26-30 U Wisconsin</p>
<p>However, some of U Illinois schools have long been much tougher to access than their overall admissions statistics might lead one to expect. Engineering and business definitely are not automatics, even for well-statted applicants. </p>
<p>barron’s point on finances is on the mark, but one should be aware of the large differences in cost, particularly for OOS students. According to collegeboard.com, here is how they compare for IS and OOS Tuition & Fees:</p>
<p>$12,528, $26,670 U Illinois (17% of 1st-yr students are OOS)</p>
<p>$11,659, $34,937 U Michigan (32% of 1st-yr students are OOS)</p>
<p>$8310, $23,059 U Wisconsin (36% of 1st-yr students are OOS, but note that many hail from Minnesota and pay IS tuition rates)</p>