University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Public · Selective · IL

Photo: Beyond My Ken (CC BY-SA 4.0)

School data & stats

TypePublic

LocationIL · Midwest

SettingUrban

Undergrads36,258

Student:faculty20:1

Outcomes

4-yr grad rate73.2%

6-yr grad rate85.1%

Drop-out rate5.2%

Study abroad—

Cost

In-state tuition$16k

Out-of-state tuition$35k

Application fee—

Community

Racial diversity62.5%

Gender diversity48%

International13.9%

Identity—

Overview

The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is Illinois' land-grant flagship, spanning the twin cities of Urbana and Champaign in the central Illinois prairie. It combines Big Ten scale with a research culture as serious as any public university in the country, and its identity is closely tied to engineering and computing achievement, the campus regularly gets credited as a birthplace of ideas that shaped the modern internet and personal computing.

Academics

UIUC is best known as an engineering and computer science powerhouse, with alumni and faculty who helped shape the modern tech industry; its computer science program in particular draws applicants nationally and is often mentioned alongside the most selective programs in the country. Accounting, agriculture, and library and information science are other historic strengths, each with a long institutional track record. Large lecture courses are common in the first two years, narrowing into specialized upper-level seminars and lab work, and the university's library system, one of the largest in the country, supports genuinely deep research access even for undergraduates who seek it out.

Campus & student life

Campus life has classic Big Ten energy: large-scale football and basketball crowds, a substantial Greek system, and hundreds of student organizations spread across a sprawling campus that takes real planning to navigate. The twin-city setting gives students a self-contained college town, Green Street's restaurants and bars, music venues, and ample off-campus housing, without needing a car to reach a major city. Quad life, marching band traditions, and a deep engineering-school culture round out the social calendar.

Getting in

Admissions is program-specific for many majors, especially engineering and computer science, meaning students often apply directly into a college rather than the university broadly, and switching into those programs later can be genuinely difficult. Strong quantitative preparation matters heavily for the technical tracks, and essays and other qualitative material generally carry less weight than they would at a small liberal arts college.

After graduation

Illinois computer science and engineering graduates are heavily recruited by major technology and engineering employers nationally, and the alumni network in tech is unusually deep and influential for a public university, with many prominent tech-industry figures among its graduates. Business and agriculture graduates also have well-established regional and national pipelines, and the university's research scale gives many undergraduates a real path into graduate school with faculty they've already worked alongside.

Worth knowing

Because so much of the university's national reputation rests on specific colleges rather than the institution as a whole, prospective students should research the admissions process, curriculum, and internal transfer rules for their intended major carefully; selectivity and format can differ meaningfully between, say, a direct-admit engineering program and the broader College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

illinois.edu ↗

Admissions

Acceptance rate42.4%

Enrolled mid-50%SAT 1310–1520 · ACT 30–34

Test policyoptional

Rec letters0

Deadlines (2026–27 cycle)

Early actionNov 1

Regular decisionJan 5

Verified from the school’s admissions page ↗

Applying (2026-27 cycle)

Apply through Common App.

Applying by the Early Action deadline is non-binding, so you can still apply to other schools while getting an earlier decision.

Supplemental essays (5)

Explain, in detail, an experience you've had in the past 3 to 4 years related to your first-choice major.
150 words · Required · For applicants with a declared first-choice major; roughly 150 words.
Describe your personal and/or career goals after graduating from Illinois and how your selected first-choice major will help you achieve them.
150 words · Required · For applicants with a declared first-choice major; roughly 150 words.
What are your future career or academic goals? You may include courses you took in high school and how these impacted your goals.
150 words · Required · For undeclared applicants, answered instead of the declared-major prompts; roughly 150 words.
What are your academic interests? Please include 2-3 majors you're considering at Illinois and why.
150 words · Required · For undeclared applicants, answered instead of the declared-major prompts; roughly 150 words.
Please explain your interest in your second-choice major or your overall academic or career goals.
150 words · Optional · Only if you list a second-choice major; roughly 150 words.