Anonymous wrote:I attended school there and it was about a year after I arrived I finally realized what 'UIUC' actually stood for (always knew it as 'Illinois', not 'The University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign).

If you have colleagues in the CS or Engineering that have not heard of Illinois--fire them. Seriously. They are that out of touch. Illinois is one of the top schools in the WORLD when it comes to engineering programs and the sciences.

With that said, what does your DD want to study?

computer science in engineering.
D is both happy to go to University of Illinois and already overwhelmed thinking about possible workload and rigor.

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:I went there and I've never had anyone tell me that they have never heard of it. But, I normally refer to it as "The University of Illinois" or the "U of I'.

I didn't know you went there, Jeff!

It has the second largest medical scholars (combined MD/PhD and MD/JD) program in the country. Harvard is first.

Yeah, I have a BA in Political Science from there. I have never heard of the medical scholars program. Just about everyone I knew when I was there was in either engineering or computer science.

What a coincidence. I was there in the mid-90s.

UIUC is huge. There is a lot going on. I don't think many who went there know about all the areas of excellence.

It's an R1 designated research institution, at the top of the Carnegie classification, and it has the fastest US university supercomputer to support that, along with hosting the NCSA. When Gates did a 5-campus tour about 15 years ago, he went to Harvard, MIT, Cornell, Carnegie-Mellon and Illinois.
It has the second largest university library in the country. Again, that's second only to Harvard. Their School of Library Sciences was ranked top in the nation.

Of course, it has some history as a party school, and the institution is so large that there is going to be a range of quality. Overall, it is excellent, and when it shines, it is pretty amazing.

Ask them if they've ever heard of Netscape...

The Web was first popularized by Mosaic,[25] a graphical browser launched in 1993 by Marc Andreessen's team at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign (UIUC).[26] The origins of Mosaic date to 1992. In November 1992, the NCSA at the University of Illinois (UIUC) established a website. In December 1992, Andreessen and Eric Bina, students attending UIUC and working at the NCSA, began work on Mosaic with funding from the High-Performance Computing and Communications Initiative, a US-federal research and development program.[27] Andreessen and Bina released a Unix version of the browser in February 1993; Mac and Windows versions followed in August 1993.[14] The browser gained popularity due to its strong support of integrated multimedia, and the authors’ rapid response to user bug reports and recommendations for new features.

After graduation from UIUC, Andreessen and James H. Clark, former CEO of Silicon Graphics, met and formed Mosaic Communications Corporation in April 1994 to develop the Mosaic Netscape browser commercially. The company later changed its name to Netscape, and the browser was developed further as Netscape Navigator.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here.
Thank you all for your inputs.
My D is considering UIUC for undergrad.
I found it very odd that many did not know that school.

The University of Illinois is VERY well known and VERY well respected. I do not know anyone who as ever called it UIUC. I don't mean this unkindly but why are you calling it that? Perhaps if you call it by a more common name, like University of Illinois, more people will know what you are talking about!

I live in Chicago and at least 50 kids/year go from my kids' HS and Instagram bios are ALWAYS uiuc '22 or whatever. So yes, people call it that especially in internet/social media speak.

What does your DC want to study? Engineering or CS, maybe. Anything else? Hell no. The state of Illinois is crumbling and their colleges are not immune.

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:I went there and I've never had anyone tell me that they have never heard of it. But, I normally refer to it as "The University of Illinois" or the "U of I'.

I didn't know you went there, Jeff!

It has the second largest medical scholars (combined MD/PhD and MD/JD) program in the country. Harvard is first.

Yeah, I have a BA in Political Science from there. I have never heard of the medical scholars program. Just about everyone I knew when I was there was in either engineering or computer science.

jsteele wrote:I went there and I've never had anyone tell me that they have never heard of it. But, I normally refer to it as "The University of Illinois" or the "U of I'.

I didn't know you went there, Jeff!

It has the second largest medical scholars (combined MD/PhD and MD/JD) program in the country. Harvard is first.

TJ has had 70-80 applicants for each of the last 3 years. Usually about half are accepted (kids are applying in CS and engineering) and a dozen or so attend.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

The University of Illinois is VERY well known and VERY well respected. I do not know anyone who as ever called it UIUC. I don't mean this unkindly but why are you calling it that? Perhaps if you call it by a more common name, like University of Illinois, more people will know what you are talking about!

when my friend did not know what UIUC was, I elaborated the school name.
her immediate reaction was if it was a state school and she never heard it as a strong engineering school.
But from now on, I will try to use the common name of school instead of abbreviation.

Your friend is nuts - some of the strongest engineering programs in the country are state schools. Has your friend ever heard of University of Michigan, Ohio State, UC-Berkeley, Penn State, etc...?

Also: https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/engineering-doctorate

*I have NEVER heard anyone refer to University of Illinois as UIUC, and I've never heard anyone refer to Carnegie Mellon as CMU.

I live in Chicago. The main campus is ‘U of I,’ University of Illinois at Chicago is ‘UIC.’ People here generally don’t call it ‘Illinois’ For obvious reasons (confusing) but that’s how I’d refer to it out of state.

It doesn’t get much press on this board, but it’s a strong school with a good reputation... although I think the city it is in sucks.

Are you kidding??? It's the state university for Illinois - well known for its engineering program and library science, among many other things. EVERYONE has heard of it. Your co-workers must be idiots.

Illinois is extremely well known. It’s in a dumpster fire of a state, but the school is top notch.

UIUC is ranked way higher than Purdue in engineering (and most things)

Just FYI the school has had a lot of racial and administrative problems in recent years. Lots of scandals involving donors buying admissions for their children, scandals about donors controlling faculty hiring decisions and overall admistrative incompetence.

On campus, they use UIUC, but even in state (but off campus) it's always U of I or University of Illinois.

I attended school there and it was about a year after I arrived I finally realized what 'UIUC' actually stood for (always knew it as 'Illinois', not 'The University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign).

If you have colleagues in the CS or Engineering that have not heard of Illinois--fire them. Seriously. They are that out of touch. Illinois is one of the top schools in the WORLD when it comes to engineering programs and the sciences.

With that said, what does your DD want to study?