The University of Illinois Urbana - Champaign

Date: May 22 2002
Major: Electrical Engineering (This Major's Salary over time)
Your experience will be entirely what you decide to make of it. The decision to sit in the back of the class - or skip it entirely, avoid independent research, and never interact with your professors is entirely your own. My freshman year, I signed up for a senior-level social science class, sat in front, answered questions, and approached the professor about his research. Four semesters later, I've already worked on three separate professional papers with him and/or under his advisement, with two in preparation for eventual publication. This will NOT happen TO you; you must take the initiative. If you don't want to be awash in a sea of people as a freshman, sign up to stay in one of the special living/learning communities at one of the dorms. This will create a small social circle from which you can expand. You will likely not be randomly assigned to such a community, however, but rather must make a conscious decision to do so.

The university is huge, no one disputes that, but this is much more of an advantage than a disadvantage. Your friends, classes and coursework can be as small as you choose to make them, but there are always administrative benefits from being a part of a system so large that nobody knows what anyone else is doing - for instance, if you need approval for something, you can often keep asking midlevel administrators until one says yes.

Whether you are extremely religious, atheist, liberal, conservative, etc. I will personally guarantee there are at least a hundred kids exactly like you who meet once a week (or more). Did you choose bad friends? Go get some new ones - there's no shortage of people and most are open to new aquaintances. You can party as much or as little as you want to, your course load can be breezy or devastating, and to a great extent your grades can be as good as you make them or as bad as you allow them to get. Personally, in four semesters I've had both positive and negative experiences with class sizes, friends, professors, living arrangements, course loads and overall lifestyles. Such is life. Just remember that only half of where you end up is what happens to you - the other half is how you choose to respond. Keep that in mind and you'll have a wonderful experience at Illinois.