<p>In response to boneh3ad, </p>
<p>1) I was simply repeating what I had heard from a good friend of mine. I’ve heard it from a few people, but he went into more detail on how he was surprised at how segregated he found it. I definitely agree that "students exacerbate the “problem,'” but that was exactly the point that I was trying to make. It just kind of seems like students accept certain stereotypes there and that only feeds the negative image. However, like you said, there are positive options. I signed up for housing at U of I in case I ended up having to attend, and I definitely would have chosen to live in the six pack. I only hear good things about the social environment there. But the poster asked for negatives and I did my best to give them a legitimate response from what I had heard.</p>
<p>2) I have to say I felt exactly the same way as jax. I interned for a local Illinois state politician a year ago and when we were having a discussion about how U of I should always be striving to attract the highest quality students, she said that when she spoke with one of their reps in Springfield he told her that they don’t need higher quality students because they’re already a top university. I found that to be extremely obnoxious. When I spoke with people at the business school, I always got this impersonal vibe that made me feel alienated, even after I had been admitted early. When I visited Indiana, I met with a rep who made me feel like IU really takes care of their business students, especially their direct admits. Since those were my two safety schools and Indiana gave me enough aid to make the tuitions virtually the same, I thought why wouldn’t I go to Indiana over Illinois? Illinois has a superior accounting program, but beyond that I thought Indiana would better suit any other undergrad major, especially marketing. I didn’t end up going to either, but had I had the choice, I would have chosen Indiana.</p>
<p>3) I’ll just trust you on that one because I don’t know enough about to make an argument and you’re probably right.</p>
<p>4) In response to the comment that you found “misleading,” I thought it was obvious when I typed it, but it must not have been. I have many friends at U of I, but not all of them of in the engineering program. My first statement: “but I’m pretty sure almost all of them would have gone somewhere else if they had the money or had been accepted to more desirable schools,” and my statement about how it’s one of most desirable engineering programs in the country are not mutually exclusive or contradictory. Even though it’s a desirable program, that doesn’t speak to how my friends personally felt about attending the university, espcially if you consider that not everyone I know is in the engineering program. While I have friends who are in the engineering program who wanted to attend other schools and would have, I also have friends in the business school who would have attended other universities.</p>
<p>The truth is that the engineering program is a bit of a different animal than the rest of the university, but you would expect that it would have some similarities to business in the sense that it’s fairly prestigious and competitive. I would hope that it draws students from locations beyond the Chicago metropolitan area like I believe engineering does, but I’m not sure if that’s true. And like you said, the university as a whole is full of tons of Chicagoans. To summarize, I was just trying to address the negatives about the university like the OP asked. If they asked for positives, I would have had a list of those as well.</p>
<p>I also should mention something because it’s extremely ironic. As I was typing this, my friend enrolled in business texted me telling me that he’s going to try to transfer out as soon as possible. Weird.</p>