I’ve heard that the UIUC computer science acceptance rate is really low, but how about the CS+x programs? I’ve heard the quality is really just as good. I’m particularly interested in CS+ statistics and CS + astronomy if it helps; I’m also OOS if it makes a difference.
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Anyone pls
I have never seen any information on this. In fact, I haven’t seen admissions rates for any specific majors, though they have published acceptance rates for CSE in the past. We were told at an admissions session that it is easier to be admitted to CS+X than CS Engineering, but they did not say how much. My guess is that if you are above the middle 50% for Liberal Arts and Sciences in terms of ACT/SAT and GPA, then you have a decent chance.
Overall admission rate is definitely lower than 10% for the whole CS department and probably <= 5% for CS Engineering. These numbers can be derived using information available in the public domain. The UIUC enrollment data publicly available says in 2017 Fall UIUC enrolled 160 students in whole CS department (i.e. combining CS from CoE + all CS majors offered from LAS). In CS Eng just 69 students was enrolled. UIUC says they got more than 5000 applications for CS. Assuming only 40% of the admitted students were enrolled (i.e. lower rate than colleges ranked similarly for CS), the admission rate would be 8% or less.
Admittance into CS is certainly difficult, but I’m not so sure about all the data you report @galaxywatcher. In 2016, I have seen posted that there were 199 first year freshman CS students across all colleges. That year, about 66 percent of all CS undergraduates were in COE, so the 69 seats seems a little low to me.
@tonypa - Please check the data for Fall 2017 at http://www.dmi.illinois.edu/stuenr/class/enrfa17.htm. The number I gave was for 2017 Fall. In 2017 they admitted 160 CS students (including 69 students in COE) across all colleges. In 2016 Fall, they admitted 200 CS students (i.e. including 77 students in COE for CS or 38.5% of all CS freshman and not 66%!) across all colleges. I think you are referring to guess work by folks which were not based on hard data.
Thanks @galaxywatcher. I had not seen that link. The 66 percent was based on data at this site: https://cs.illinois.edu/about-us/statistics. I assumed the percentage would be similar across classes (i.e., fresh, soph, junior, and senior), but I guess that is not the case.
@galaxywatcher - Something seems very wrong with those numbers. It shows Engineering enrollment sharply declining for almost every major and overall from 3188 seniors to 1876 juniors to 1424 sophomores to 869 freshman. We were told that engineering enrollments had been significantly increasing in most engineering majors to offset declining state budget contributions in recent years. Also, it shows 7541 total engineering undergrads. The current Engineering “About” page claims 9145 total undergrads.
As for CS enrollments, these numbers tell a different story:
https://cs.illinois.edu/about-us/statistics
This would be consistent with the News Gazette article I linked in the other thread that indicated about 215 seats for CSE freshman this year, then add transfers and you’d get the 1100 ish numbers shown on the CS enrollments page. That article said there were 4300 applicants, so the acceptance rate was about 5%. I don’t know what the admit rate was, but I’d think that of those admitted, a pretty high percentage would accept a spot in one of the most prestigious programs nationwide. We were told at an admission session that it was under 10% for CS Engineering, but it’s possible they quoted acceptance rate instead of admittance rate.
Also, in sizing up the stats, the enrollment stats report listed above might not be quite accurate as students are counted by “student level”, and I think, for purposes of the census counts, level is determined by hours, so you could have a “freshman” meaning first year in college, but he’s a sophomore for some purposes as he walked in with a good number of hours. For example, see Dean’s List-there are chronological freshman designated as year "2"s, and you wouldn’t know it unless you happened to know the particular student…
@IL2023 - That makes a lot more sense. UIUC is fairly good at providing AP credit and transferring courses from community colleges, so a lot of freshman (particularly in the programs with higher stats students like CS) could certainly be entering in with enough hours to be a sophomore.
My son entered this year as a freshman with 60ish hours of credits from APs and community college work, so definitely might help explain the disparity. It still seems possibly skewed in light of ever increasing freshman admitted class sizes. Also, the totals still don’t add up to the department web page numbers, either for engineering overall or CS.
@illinoisx3
Per the quora link below, the “acceptance rate” for UIUC CS (in Engineering) was 18.51% in 2017. Defined as the number of acceptances into the CS Engineering program divided by number of applications. The “enrollment rate” would be closer to the 5% you mention (i.e. the number of students accepted who ended up enrolling divided by the number of applications or basically number of available seats divided by applications). The difference between the 18.51% acceptance rate and the 5% enrollment rate (using your number) would be the yield (percent of accepted students who enrolled).
@illinoisx3: I did consider a yield of 40%. That means the percentage of students who actually decided to enroll after they are offered admission. Taking total number of students who decided to enroll as 160 per the site I already mentioned, the number of students who were offered admission for a 40% yield rate will be 160/0.40 = 400. UIUC did say over 5000 applications they received. Using this number you get acceptance rate as 8%. Even if the yield is much lower say 30% (which is highly unlikely for such a top ranked program), you will still get an acceptance rate of 160/(0.3*5000) or 10.67%. The quota link you provided does not provided any data on how he got his numbers. How can that be more reliable?
The article I linked in the other thread from the News Gazette said 4300 applications for 215 spots. Beyond that, I can’t explain all the discrepancies. Most likely, one or more of the sources are incorrect or misinterpreted.
The quora link to the 18.51% CS Engineering acceptance rate states “the 2017 admissions statistics straight from the source”. There was a discussion of that data on the redd it UIUC forum and it sounded like it was from a freedom of information act request. Probably many top CS students apply to the same schools (e.g. UIUC, Michigan, Wisconsin, Purdue, UT-Austin, UCLA, UWash) and also the BIg 4 (CMU, MIT, Stanford, Berkeley - which are in an entire other league and do have the single digit acceptance rates). On the CMU SCS stats page you can back into their yield and it appears to be somewhere in the low 40’s (something like 7000 apps, 7% acceptance and 200 enrolled - approximately).
If a student has good enough stats to get in UIUC CS they probably have at least one other offer to another top program as well. Even an 18% acceptance would be a reach for everyone. No matter what the acceptance rate, a student should apply if they are interested. If you live in Illinois and are still curious, you could try to file a freedom of information request to obtain the stats.
On a separate note, if the numbers given in the News Gazette article for Fall 2017 admission is considered - 4300+ CS applications for 215 spot - then for an yield rate of 40%, the overall UIUC CS acceptance rate will be 12.5%. Assuming most of the applicants put CS in COE as the first choice, the CS in COE acceptance rate must be less than 10% even if the yield rate was in thirties.
@galaxywatcher
The 215 spots would be CS engineering only. I think the primarily problem with your calculations and why you don’t believe the 18.5% acceptance rate is that your assumed enrollment numbers are too low (ignoring the higher yield assumption for now).
Earlier you said “…in 2017 Fall UIUC enrolled 160 students in whole CS department (i.e. combining CS from CoE + all CS majors offered from LAS). In CS Eng just 69 students was enrolled.”
Per the UIUC website, TOTAL undergraduate enrollment for Computer Science in both Engineering and LAS is 1,787 students (across all 4 years: Fr, So, Jr, Sr) with 1,123 in Engineering and 664 in LAS. So your 160 enrollment assumption for all of CS in Freshman year is way too low (that is less than 10% of the total undergraduate CS enrollment).
Link to UIUC CS enrollment stats: https://cs.illinois.edu/about-us/statistics
Best of luck!
@galaxywatcher : “Even if the yield is much lower say 30% (which is highly unlikely for such a top ranked program)”
Not really. CMU, one of the Top CS programs, on par with MIT, Stanford & Berkeley, had a yield of approximately 42% in 2017, so somewhere around 30% for UIUC is not unreasonable. I believe the quora data was from a freedom of info request (there was a discussion about it on UIUC reddit earlier this year). If you are an Illinois resident you could file a FOIA request as well. Also, I believe there are over 200 seats for CS Engineering (not the 160 you mention - not sure what that DMI data link represents, but something is off).
CMU had an acceptance rate of 7% in 2017 (the other #1 programs probably had something slightly less). A rate of 8% is way too low for UIUC. Once you get past the Top programs (CMU, MIT, Stanford, Berkeley), there is not going to be a big difference between the #5 & #15 programs. There are several other top 20 programs public in the midwest (e.g. UMich, UWisc, Purdue). Students applying to UIUC are probably also applying to other top programs (beside the other midwest publics mentioned, there is UT, UCLA, Maryland, GT). If someone has the stats to get into UIUC they have the ability to get in other Top 20 programs. They can only pick one. Plus, in state tuition is significantly cheaper at these public schools. A 30% yield for UIUC is reasonable.
But I am not sure why it matters if the acceptance rate is 10% or 20%, it’s still a reach for everyone. If someone likes a program they should apply.
CMU stats: https://admission.enrollment.cmu.edu/pages/undergraduate-admission-statistics
@galaxywatcher : “Even if the yield is much lower say 30% (which is highly unlikely for such a top ranked program)”
Not really. CMU, one of the Top CS programs, on par with MIT, Stanford & Berkeley, had a yield of approximately 42% in 2017, so somewhere around 30% for UIUC is not unreasonable. I believe the quora data was from a freedom of info request (there was a discussion about it on UIUC reddit earlier this year). If you are an Illinois resident you could file a FOIA request as well. Also, I believe there are over 200 seats for CS Engineering (not the 160 you mention - not sure what that DMI data link represents, but something is off).
CMU had an acceptance rate of 7% in 2017 (the other #1 programs probably had something slightly less). A rate of 8% is way too low for UIUC. Once you get past the Top programs (CMU, MIT, Stanford, Berkeley), there is not going to be a big difference between the #5 & #15 programs. There are several other top 20 programs public in the midwest (e.g. UMich, UWisc, Purdue). Students applying to UIUC are probably also applying to other top programs (beside the other midwest publics mentioned, there is UT, UCLA, Maryland, GT). If someone has the stats to get into UIUC they have the ability to get in other Top 20 programs. They can only pick one. Plus, in state tuition is significantly cheaper at these public schools. A 30% yield for UIUC is reasonable.
But I am not sure why it matters if the acceptance rate is 10% or 20%, it’s still a reach for everyone. If someone likes a program they should apply.
CMU stats: https://admission.enrollment.cmu.edu/pages/undergraduate-admission-statistics