<p>Same experience here, never heard of it until college. Didn't know much about until it when I started researching grad schools. Schools without a strong sports program tend to stay under the radar from the general public despite strong academics, for example, Emory.</p>
<p>How about MIT and Caltech?---oh yeah everybody knows their teams--both the beavers.
Remember George Carlin's football scores MIT 6.7 CIT 2^3</p>
<p>MIT and Caltech are different. You hear those names in movies all the time. You don't hear Illinois in movies and they're not that great in sports.</p>
<p>Just wait!-I hear the Zooker is going to put them on the map! Ha</p>
<p>LOL I'm just glad he's not at Florida anymore.</p>
<p>I'm from Holland and all those schools are awsome.. especially UM and UCLA. UIUC and GTech and great too!</p>
<p>You and about 10 million other Gator fans!</p>
<p>To be honest, I have never heard of Illinois until I applied to college either. After I started taking a closer look at it, I I realized it definitely deserves a better name recognition. For hell's sake, 20 years ago, on the first issue of U.S NEWS REPORT's college ranking, UIUC's was ranked as the 8th best university in the nation. Well, apparently ,UIUC has been slipping on the ranking in the past decades, as you all can see, largely due to its high admission rate, pressured by the state and the parents, and the high percentage of in state students. Still, the number of Nobel prize laureates affiliated with UIUC is in the top 18 in the world, higher than UM, UVA or GIT. The peer assessment score of UIUC has always been high, which is in the top 30 of the country. UIUC's engineering is in the league with MIT, Berkely and Stanford and above GIT. UIUC's science programs, such as physics and chemistry, are in the top 10 of the country as well, maybe even higher, which are all above GIT's relavant programs. If we start talking about humanities, and liberal arts, UIUC beats GIT in so many areas, business, communications, psychology,..... C'mon, GIT's about tech after all.</p>
<p>Look, no one is denying the quality of UIUC. We all agree that it is a great school. But face it, the common person will probably know about GT or UCLA over UIUC. That doesn't mean they're better schools, they're just more well-known to the general public. That's all we're saying. (and imo they're all pretty much on the same level academically)</p>
<p>
[quote]
To be honest, I have never heard of Illinois until I applied to college either. After I started taking a closer look at it, I I realized it definitely deserves a better name recognition. For hell's sake, 20 years ago, on the first issue of U.S NEWS REPORT's college ranking, UIUC's was ranked as the 8th best university in the nation. Well, apparently ,UIUC has been slipping on the ranking in the past decades, as you all can see, largely due to its high admission rate, pressured by the state and the parents, and the high percentage of in state students. Still, the number of Nobel prize laureates affiliated with UIUC is in the top 18 in the world, higher than UM, UVA or GIT. The peer assessment score of UIUC has always been high, which is in the top 30 of the country. UIUC's engineering is in the league with MIT, Berkely and Stanford and above GIT. UIUC's science programs, such as physics and chemistry, are in the top 10 of the country as well, maybe even higher, which are all above GIT's relavant programs. If we start talking about humanities, and liberal arts, UIUC beats GIT in so many areas, business, communications, psychology,..... C'mon, GIT's about tech after all.
[/quote]
Looks like someone's a UIUC student ;)</p>
<p>I was in ST. LOUIS and nobody thought UIUC was a big deal. I'm like "dude, at least if you're going for Wash U, apply to UIUC as a backup school" and they'd just shrug.</p>
<p>It's #1 for Civil Engineering. That's a big deal.</p>
<p>Rankings don't have much to do with name recognition. Location and sports matter the most.
GT and UCLA are located in LA and Atlanta, while UIUC is located in Chambana, which is not really known at all. Also, UCLA and GT probably have stronger sports too.<br>
It will be hard for UIUC to get the name recognition of UCLA or GT, I think.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, UIUC is a great school, and has contributed many to the world, such as MRI or graphical web browser. Go UIUC :)</p>
<p>UIUC has good name recognition within the engineering world, and that's really all that matters (to me at least).</p>
<p>EE is top 3 hardest programs in the school here and employers are well aware.</p>
<p>I would be more worried about being able to complete the major than the prestige.</p>
<p>maybe if you just called it it u of i. i'm in-state, and no one calls it uiuc.</p>
<p>^ Ha. Yeah i'm also in-state and once or twice I go UIUC and people go ''WHATT?'' Anyhow, U of I sounds much better.</p>
<p>maybe its different in-state. i've always heard it called uiuc or just plain urbana. If you say u of i, how would you distinguish chicago from urbana?</p>
<p>The University of Illinois is known as "U of I". Illinois-Chicago is "UIC". No one in Illinois or the Chicago area calls refers to it as UIUC. It's U of I.</p>