The Illinois Institute of Technology

Date: Jan 03 2010
Major: Civil Engineering (This Major's Salary over time)
Firstly, this school is not popular and is never mentioned in the U.S. News and World Report rankings but dont be fooled you should not even consider this school unless your ACT score is in the upper twenties at least. Any student with a score <27 is going to struggle to some degree. I dont care what your class rank is or what high school you are from.

At a school like IIT if you begin to struggle academically you are absolutely destined for misery because of the campus location, lack of school spirit, concentration of unhappy students and faculty who dont really care about undergraduate students. Four or five years at IIT and you might not like the person that you will have become.

Personally, I should have gone to a junior college (saving tens of thousands of dollars) and then transfered to UIC. At the end of the day nobody really cares what school you went to…Im sorry they just dont (Unless you are REALLY, REALLY smart and want to pursue a PHD). Most of the people that I work with went to UIC, Bradley, and UIUC and payed a fraction of what I paid for a living hell at IIT. There arent that many people in my industry that graduated from IIT and if they did, most likely they transfered in. Its just a tough place to be for 4 years. The retention rate is abysmal. All of my friends that I graduated with(who came in as true freshman) wish they had gone some place else.

If your really smart and you enjoy being around other smart kids look at some of the bigger state schools for a better college experience. There are smart kids at Michigan, Purdue and Illinois. There really are. Quite frankly…the best engineers that I have worked with come from large state schools. I hope I didnt burst any bubbles.

If you have a 28 and above, you really, really, really like to study, your not that social (and dont plan on developing any social skills) and your not that into girls and dont plan on being interested in them for the next 10 years then IIT is the school for you. YOU DONT HAVE TO GO TO A "TECH" SCHOOL TO GET A GOOD ENGINEERING EDUCATION!