<p>Not in terms of academics, but diversity, reputation, location, alcohol/drugs, food, housing, etc.</p>
<p>Both have great reputations. I could be wrong, but I think Wisconsin has more out-of-state students than Illinois. I prefer Madison’s location and atmosphere to UIUC’s.</p>
<p>UW is about 30% OOS while UIUC is around 10%. Madison if far more scenic and lively.</p>
<p>Are you in-state for one or the other? </p>
<p>Or, are you out of state for both?</p>
<p>The cost could be very different depending on residency.</p>
<p>In-state Cost of Attendence (tuition, fees, room, board, etc)
$20,280, U WISCONSIN
$25,988, U ILLINOIS</p>
<p>Out of State Cost of Attendence (tuition, fees, room, board, etc) per year
$35,029, U WISCONSIN
$40,130, U ILLINOIS</p>
<p>Is money not an issue? Will you need financial aid?</p>
<p>Can you visit these schools?</p>
<p>Wisconsin>UIUC</p>
<p>Wisconsin = UIUC = Michigan</p>
<p>All “Big Ten” state institutions are pretty much the same to me. Except for the Wolverines, Big Ten alumni mostly seem modest and unassuming and don’t need to put down their conference rivals/peers to make themselves feel better.</p>
<p>Wisconsin and Illinois are peer institutions, both ranking in the top 50 USNWR undergrad, and generally top 20 in most fields at the Ph.D. level. They both have significant OOS populations (UW is bumped by its reciprocity arrangement with Minnesota, so OOS for UW is a little misleading). I cannot speak to the feel of each campus, but all other metrics should be very close.</p>
<p>Academically you could almost call them twins.</p>
<p>edit: just looked up their USNWR ranking – funnily enough, they are tied for #39. Not just twins, but monozygotic twins… LOL</p>
<p>Two great public universities; effectively as good as any publics anywhere. The most important difference between them is the setting. Go to Champaign. Then go to Madison. The difference is profound.</p>
<p>Dunn is incorrect at least at the undergrad level. UI is about 87% instate with about half them OOS internationals.
UW is 35% OOS including Minn kids and 24% OOS excluding Minn. Internationals are 4.6% of total UG students and included in the OOS.</p>
<p>While they look similar in size and ranking they have a very different feel and social aspect. UW is more liberal while UI is more conservative and “pre-professional”. UW is downtown and on a lake. UI is more self-contained, flat and on a cornfield.</p>
<p>"Two years after University of Illinois officials killed a proposal to enroll fewer in-state students at their flagship campus, the percentage of freshmen from Illinois in this fall’s class has dropped to less than 83 percent, the lowest in at least a decade, the Tribune has learned.</p>
<p>Intense public outcry forced administrators at the Urbana-Champaign campus to backtrack in 2006 from a plan to decrease in-state undergraduate enrollment from 90 percent to 85 percent. But this fall only about 87 percent of the campus’ 31,181 undergraduates are from Illinois."</p>
<p>[State</a> kids squeezed out at U. of I. - Chicago Tribune](<a href=“http://archives.chicagotribune.com/2008/sep/14/business/chi-illinois-enroll-bd14-sep14]State”>Chicago Tribune - Chicago News, Sports, Weather, Business & Things to Do)</p>
<p>I think Wisconsin beats out Illinois by far. Madison is a very cool small city with a lot of arts & entertainment. Champaign is well…in the middle of nowhere. The college is pretty much it.</p>
<p>
with very different appearances.</p>
<p>My post left out a few words. Should say of the OOS 13%, about half of that group are International students. All that engineering and computers.</p>
<p>Putting academics and rankings aside, UW destroys UIUC in desirability IMHO. The only student life edge UIUC can offer is bigger Greek life with bigger houses, but if Greek life is your thing, you could immerse yourself in it at UW for 4 years perfectly well.</p>
<p>“The only student life edge UIUC can offer is bigger Greek life with bigger houses”</p>
<p>Why some of us went to UW instead of UIUC.</p>
<p>In Engineering, UIUC is better than Wisconsin, except for Chemical Engineering, where Wisconsin is second to none. In most other respects, Wisconsin is better than UIUC. Overall, for academics, I give the slight advantage to Wisconsin. In terms of quality of life and overall experience, Wisconsin is significantly better than UIUC.</p>
<p>I-Urbana
It’s a good school for engineering.</p>
<p>alexandre, are you confusing Wisconsin with Minnesota as the best ChemE school?</p>
<p>You are right Dunnin, Minneosta is indeed tops in ChemE, but so is Wisconsin. Both Minnesota and Wisconsin are ranked between #2 and #5 in ChemE.</p>
<p>
Excuse me? :)</p>
<p>Second to MIT
Second to Berkeley
Second to Minnesota</p>
<p>usually.</p>
<p>You are the expect UCB. I was under the impression that the top 4 or 5 are roughly on equal footing and that Wisconsin was one of them.</p>