@IlliniDad18 Perhaps I should have been more specific–not many people with top stats from my school district (private schools in the Bay Area) go to Illinois. The more popular choice are obviously the cheaper UCs or top private schools, granted you get into one. Of course CA students will be the largest portion of out of state students at uiuc because we also have the largest population in the country and, therefore, the most students.
Berkeley is Berkeley. Nearly 400k high school grads in California last year and all the strong ones applying to UCB. That is certainly a very strong pool of applicants at the top of that pile.
GaTech “much more competitive and qualified pool of applicants” than Illinois is just silly.
Accepted with Chemical Engineering major, OOS
LAS James Scholar (for some reason Chem E is in LAS) and University Achievement Scholarship (8k/yr)
GPA: ~4.3 (I think? Actually somewhat unsure because of religion classes being counted… Catholic school LOL)
Classes: 8 APs, 5 Honors
ACT: 34
SAT: 2220 composite, 2160 one sitting
SAT II: 750 Math 2 and Chem
Class Rank: 8/122
Essays: 7.5-8/10
Extracurriculars: Co-Founder/President of STEM Club, FIRST Robotics, Varsity Swimming, Club Volleyball, Peer Tutor, Multiple service clubs, Job as a receptionist, Job creating promotional material and social media marketing
Honors: NM Commended, AP Scholar, NHS, SNHS, Sociedad Honoraria Hispanica, CSF (does that do anything), Multiple Top-of-Class awards, Mu Alpha Theta (maybe… my school claims that I’m part of it but we don’t really do anything gg)
Other: Girl in engineering? The fact that Chem E is in LAS? Dad did grad school at Illinois, though not sure if it helps as another poster said.
Hopefully this helps OP! Good luck getting the scholarship! Your stats are very competitive and much better than mine, IMO. Unfortunately international students sometimes get the short end of the stick 
@determined2300, GTech uses the Common App, so they get flooded with applicants. Cal is in-state for CA, which has a ton of people, so they also get flooded with applicants. This is why judging a school by how easy it is to get in is stupid. In any case, with UIUC Engineering, the question isn’t whether you can get in but whether you can get out.
Finally, I keep repeating this, but somehow you still don’t seem to get it: UIUC admits by major. Some majors are easier to get in than others. CS in Engineering rejected some applicants (numerous folks with 34 ACT last year) who are more qualified than the average admit to other Engineering majors.
Also, do I need to point out the flaw in your logic when you say GTech is far harder to get in to based off of GTech’s EA admissions vs. UIUC’s RD admissions? Did GTech deny the rest or did they defer?
@PurpleTitan
GaTech denied the applicants. Several of which then got in UIUC.
Yeah, I know the logic is flawed. And I put it up to find them (I knew it would raise some criticism).
@determined2300 Sorry, I should’ve been more clear. I wasn’t necessarily saying that the academics at UIUC are equal to those at Ga. Tech and UCB, I simply mean that all are very good public engineering programs. Most other US News top 10/top 5 engineering programs are private schools (MIT, Stanford, CalTech, Carnegie Mellon).
That said, US News rankings are a based partially off acceptance rates, and UIUC has a higher acceptance rate than Berkeley and Ga. Tech for the reasons PurpleTitan stated. The rankings don’t mean all that much once you’re in the upper tier - go for the best fit. Honestly, I doubt the student pools will be very much more competitive and qualified at the other publics than at UIUC Engineering.
@determined2300
School-wide the GaTech ACT medians are maybe 1 point higher than Illinois’.
Engineering vs. engineering GaTech is not more selective than Illinois, despite having no other top 20 engineering school within 500 miles.
The problem is not your logic, but your sample size.
Oops.I’m a big fat liar. Confused the University Achievement with College Achievement. Regardless, looked like the scholarship section might be pretty complete as of admission notification. Perhaps as some scholarship recipients decline the (really late) offers, the monies will be offered to other students.
My NOA came out today and didn’t talk about any scholarship in it. Does this mean that I am not gonna get any merit based scholarship? I am also accepted to CS. :-/
I know merit scholarships are a HUGE deal for some people, especially when it’s the difference for you to be able to attend a school or not, but some of you are not looking at the big picture. For those who got into UIUC COE, you should be ecstatic and realize that may be the best opportunity to come your way and any loans you have to take, will be easily paid off by the $ you will make when you get out of college. My child was offered money at other schools for their CS program that would make them cheaper and/or in line with UIUC, but once the acceptance from UIUC came, it was no contest and the money is secondary. We are turning away $75,000 from another good school for this opportunity. These opportunities, do not come along every day.
I don’t understand @srparent15
Are you in-state? Because for OOS and for International, the cost of attendance is more than 50000$ p.a. That means almost 200,000$ for an undergraduate degree.
According to you, we will be able to repay this much amount of money after few years of working? I think it’ll take us 5-10 years to repay these exorbitant loans.
We visited UIUC all the way from Boston on the two coldest days - the windchill must have been in negative teens and came back very impressed with their Engineering - the opportunities are mindblowing - the sheer number of programs and Institutes devoted to specialized research and interdisciplinary opportunities is something to consider strongly. The required coursework will likely be the same almost everywhere in the top 20 programs but its the other opportunities that have the immense ability to mold our children’s future that can be a game-changer.
We met with Lenny Pitt, the Director of Undergraduate Programs and his take was simple: if your child needs some handholding or likes an environment where your Profs know you be name and will check on you periodically then UIUC is likely not for you; if your child on the other hand wants to seek out opportunities to excel in or even explore areas of interest outside of required academics then the possibilities are endless - from entirely student/peer driven organizations to ones where graduate students act as mentors to ones where a student can be part of a Professor’s research.
My son (CS major) was very impressed and I am glad we visited.
@determined2300 - we are in state but UIUC is the one of the most expensive in state public schools in the country so we can go to an out of state school, pay out of state rates and it will still be the same cost as UIUC which is ridiculous. That is why UIUC is losing so many in-state applicants. They go can go just as good if not better programs (other than the obvious) for less money. As far as cost, for anyone coming from out of state, it’s not going to be much more expensive than some of the other schools, so the loan factor of 50k-200k is not exactly accurate because if these people will have loans no matter where they are, then the extra cost is the difference between the 2 schools. Carnegie Mellon costs more than $60,000 and I would without hesitation have sent my son there if he wanted to go there. Starting salaries are anywhere from 75,000-100,000 if not more, so the loans should be able to be paid back fairly quick. Plus the people who really need the loans can get financial aid and some merit aid no matter where they go, not to mention all the scholarships available on cappex and different scholarship organizations.
Also @determined, the tuition is not $50k. That’s with all expenses. Even for instate we’re only looking at our costs being about about $40k per year, so we are not getting much of a break for being residents here.
@srparent15
Yes. I did say the cost of attendance is $50K.
And yes, I know some schools charge larger. But at the same time, they usually have more funding. If you take schools like Princeton, Harvard, MIT etc, they all are need-blind. Other schools like GeorgiaTech have their cost of attendance itself about 10K lower than UIUC’s. Other ‘good’ but not-so-good schools like University of Minnesota at Twin Cities give merit scholarships even to Internationals. So, when one has options of going to some other school at almost 20-30K$ lesser p.a, then why not?
And this is the reason why I don’t agree with you when you said that:
You may be ecstatic here because it is the ideal choice for you since you’re in-state. But for OOS and Internationals, it’s just another school they must compare thoroughly, including financially.
And if someone has got into UIUC COE, I’m sure they’re capable enough to get accepted elsewhere also.
Indeed the lack of scholarships is exactly why UIUC’s yield is so low. Lots of people have other cheaper choices, and that is why they expect a decent amount of money as merit scholarships from UIUC.
And also, as for Computer Science is concerned, CMU is nowhere close to UIUC. I talked to some recruiters when I was searching for internships and all of them considered CMU’s CSc undergrads equivalent to MIT’s and Stanford’s.
CMU is hands down #1, I never said otherwise, I was talking about the cost that if someone got in there, they would most likely not pass it up regardless of said cost. Regardless of being in state, UIUC is much more expensive than some of the other schools my son was accepted to and considered, especially the private ones who through $10,000’s his way, but with the opportunity to go to a Top 5 Computer Science program and the opportunities that will be available for him post-grad, it is not even close.
Bottom line is that if you are international, you can find better and you can find cheaper, but you almost certainly won’t find a school that is both better and cheaper (or even the same in one and better in the other) in CS than UIUC.
Here’s a ranking based off of which schools’ CS grads end up at the most desirable companies:
https://■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/edu/rankings/us/undergraduate-software-engineering?trk=edu-rankings-category-switch-link-m
Here’s the number of CS majors at Google by school:
https://■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/edu/university-finder?facets=FS.100189,CC.1441
You can draw your own conclusions.
Also, I just looked up GTech’s COA and it’s $44K vs. $50K for UIUC (and if you just include tuition, fees, R&B, the difference is less; and living in Atlanta isn’t going to be cheaper than living in central IL no matter what the COA’s are–if you move off-campus, the R&B costs will definitely go down in Chambana while I doubt they will in Atlanta). Add in the fact that your tuition at UIUC will not increase in your 4 years there (while they will at GTech), and the total costs are virtually the same. The only way GTech would save you some money over UIUC is if you study abroad while at GTech (though fitting that in as well as all the requirements for the CS major in just 4 years may be difficult; and maybe you could save money at UIUC by studying abroad as well, though you’d have to look in to that; and I’m not even sure what the regulations are concerning internationals studying abroad, though it could be a way for American kids to save some money).
Both schools allow you to earn a bunch of AP credits.
OK, it seems that, at least in one program I looked at, you can save some money by studying abroad at UIUC.
@PurpleTitan
Thanks for the detailed info!
You have clearly changed my impression of UIUC.