People who have visited UI & WU - what are the differences? Forum

[StateSchoolSplitter]

Of course, I mean UIUC and WUSTL.

I'm not necessarily talking about differences between the school's employment prospects, I realize these are peer schools. I'm more interested, at this stage, in hearing about the differences that will make one place a better location (for whatever reasons) to spend three years.

[clintone88]

As far as regional atmosphere etc, I haven't spent much time in St. Louis, but I have a lot of friends at UIUC for grad and undergrad programs, so I've spent quite a bit of time there. If you love small town midwest and corn, then UIUC is the place for you. It's a very large school in a very small town, so you will be limited to the typical college town type of things. The closest decently sized cities are Indianapolis at about 2 hours away, and Chicago at between 2.5 and 4 hours away depending on traffic. St. Louis, on the other hand, I imagine to have more a bigger city feel to it. If you want to go out, you won't be guaranteed to have 80% of the people you see go to your school. That being said I really do enjoy UIUC and Champaign, but it just isn't a place I would want to be for an extended period of time.

[bearsfan1]

Of course, I mean UIUC and WUSTL.

I'm not necessarily talking about differences between the school's employment prospects, I realize these are peer schools. I'm more interested, at this stage, in hearing about the differences that will make one place a better location (for whatever reasons) to spend three years.

I'm currently an UG at UIUC. There's tons of threads concerning both of the schools employment prospects, so go check some of them out. Here are some basic differences : Champaign is completely based around the university. Outside of functions put on by the university, there isn't much to do. Chicago is only about 2 hours away though so it's easy to make a trip to the city for a weekend. Champaign is also cheap as hell. Even the bars have cheap drinks, for example two weekends ago was unofficial st. patty's day, and there were bars selling dollar beers. However, when going out in Champaign, you have to remember that for the majority of bars, you only have to be 19 to get in. This was awesome whenever I was 19 and 20, but now that I'm older and a little more mature, I realize how fucking annoying 19 year olds are when they're hammered at the bar.

As far as Wash U, there's a ton to do in STL. If you're into sports, you definitely won't be disappointed. STL sports are really awesome. STL has a couple casino's, if you're into gambling, and there's plenty of places to shop. As far as cost goes, STL is more expensive than living in Champaign, yet if you're moving to STL from a larger city, you'll most likely still find STL to be easy on the wallet.

Edit: Also if you do a forum search, find the name Romothesavior or something like that. He goes to WUSTL and would be able to answer your questions about the school and its employment prospects.