University of Illinois--Urbana-Champaign Student Reviews

Big Picture

The best thing about Illinois is there are so many academic opportunities. There's a class for everything, and if you can't find a class, you can always do an independent study of what you like. There are many research opportunities, if you're interested in that. I would change how many professors lead their courses - the courses tend to be huge lectures and there is little time for students to ask questions during lecture or to go up to talk to the professor after the lecture. The professor generally assigns office hours where you can go ask questions, but often, you will have a course during these office hours, and many professors are not happy to do office hours by appointment. This all really depends on the professor, but this is really typical in the science majors (in LAS, I can't really offer an honest opinion about engineering). The university is way too big - it does not have the resources to accomodate everyone. There is little unity except at sports events - most of the time, students compete with one another (it's cut-throat competition). White students hang out with white students, Hispanic students also hang out with just themselves... There's plenty of diversity, just no unity. When I tell people that I go here, the intelligent ones act very impressed. The athletic ones have their own opinions about the different teams here. And people who don't fall into either category sometimes aren't familiar with the university until I tell them we have one of the best engineering programs in the world. It's sad that people only know this university because of the engineering program, but the university is not interested in using any money or resources to make the school just as great in all the other departments. They just keep building up the engineering school. Illinois's administration has no idea what's going on, ever. An E-mail from them is a big joke. Nobody ever takes them seriously. The biggest recent controversy on campus was getting rid of our symbol, the Chief. It was not Native Americans who were offended by him, only African American and very liberal white students. The fact is there are very few Native Americans here, and the school claims that getting rid of the Chief will attract more Native Americans - but actually, the percentage of Native American students here is about the same as any other university in this region. We all know the university just caved because they felt they could receive more money from anti-Chief alumni. They actually never received more money. Many students are angry about this, but many students continue to wear Chief apparel every day. The controversy has FAR from gotten rid of the Chief!