Why UIUC Sucks Forum

[thinkbig]

Taking Helmholtz's advice, I am starting a new thread all about why UIUC sucks. Reasons:

1) UIUC is expensive and their students stand virtually no chance of securing jobs that will allow them to repay their student debt in a reasonable period of time

2) Number fudging. They do it more then anyone else. I would read and listen to their brochures very carefully because the school suck a lot more then they would like you to know.

3) See point #1.

Have to go now. I'll add to this later.

Who are you? I think you pulled this out of your ass. UIUC is a top notch school with excellent placement.

[Rob Johnson]

Taking Helmholtz's advice, I am starting a new thread all about why UIUC sucks. Reasons:

1) UIUC is expensive and their students stand virtually no chance of securing jobs that will allow them to repay their student debt in a reasonable period of time

2) Number fudging. They do it more then anyone else. I would read and listen to their brochures very carefully because the school suck a lot more then they would like you to know.

3) See point #1.

Have to go now. I'll add to this later.

UIUC was an OK school and had OK placement in the past.

Fixed.

[DannyJames]

You couldn't pay me enough to move to a coast--literally, because it would take $195k in LA, $208k in NYC, $209k in DC to match $160k in Chicago. (Admittedly, if you want real cost-of-living benefits, you go to Texas, but... blech, Texas.)

This is what I'm talking about. 160K in NY or CA really doesn't mean much. It is as good as a midlaw salary in Chicago. Yes, your school debt payments stay the same no matter where you work, but you can go so much farther in Chi-town on a similar amount of money. Chicago has bars are open until 4am (5am on Saturdays), it's got a neighborhood for basically every ethnicity, sexual orientation, or social persuasion, it's got more than adequate public transportation, more museums than you can visit in a year, awesome sports teams, and you can rent a decent 1BR for under $1000/month.

I've always marveled at how the aspiring law student community seems to ignore our nation's COL when it comes to average starting salaries of schools. Schools that are geographically close to NY or CA will obviously have a higher median salary Than other schools, but, once you graduate, you will realize how far a 160K salary takes you in NY, LA, or SF. The answer is: not very far, unless you managed to pay well under sticker for promotion. If you can manage to get simply a six-figure salary in Chicago, consider it pretty much equivalent to $160K you would get in NY.

I'm from Michigan, i will gladly take the COL over the midwestern winters. perhaps that is why some aspiring law students seem to ignore the COL in places like CA. again, more factors than money exist here

[algren]

This, unfortunately, is near impossible on an internet message board. People who actually know what the hell they are talking about don’t bother posting.

+1

[thinkbig]

I'm from Chicago. Cold, snowy, icy winters are a part of life. I don't think I could live in a place without real winters. The fact that COL is lower than NY or Cali is just a plus.

[coolkatz321]

You have to get out of the airport and off the freeway before you can say you've "been to" LA. I've "been to" Chicago, and it was the most disgusting city I have ever had the misfortune to be stuck in. I know there must be more to it, or why would people put up with that weather. The point is, if you think LA is a shit hole, its only because you don't know any more about LA than I do about Chicago.

The point here is that neither of them are NYC, which is 100 times the city they could ever hope to be. Woohoo!

[ToTransferOrNot]

You have to get out of the airport and off the freeway before you can say you've "been to" LA. I've "been to" Chicago, and it was the most disgusting city I have ever had the misfortune to be stuck in. I know there must be more to it, or why would people put up with that weather. The point is, if you think LA is a shit hole, its only because you don't know any more about LA than I do about Chicago.

The point here is that neither of them are NYC, which is 100 times the city they could ever hope to be. Woohoo!

How's that $1400-per-month studio treating you?

[algren]

First off, this is perhaps a pointless thread as no consensus of ANY sort will ever be reached on "what city is the coolest." That said, in order to further antagonize the title of the thread, I will throw my hat in the ring to say why something is "cool" versus why something "sucks" (Do we really need more internet threads detailing why things suck? Don't we have enough of those?).

I don't know anything about LA, NYC, FL, etc. I have visited all of these places, but I think it's true that you have to live in a place for awhile to get a feel for what it's capable of bringing to the table.

I have lived in Chicago for the last five years. I will probably be leaving it to attend law school in the fall and that is almost entirely due to the winters. They have really gotten to me, I'll admit it. It is cold and windy and it gets into your bones. However, I realize this is because I am giant wuss who hates winter and that's not the case for everyone.

If you can deal with winter, Chicago is freaking amazing. If you like a party scene there's Wrigleyville. If you are a hipster kid there's Wicker Park. If you are gay, head out to North Halsted. If you are a gay, hipster kid who likes to party, give Andersonville a try. There is literally a neighborhood for almost any conceivable ethnicity/interest/sexual preference/etc you can imagine. While many other large cities are segmented in this way, in my experience moving between them isn't as easy or as welcomed as it is in Chicago (I mean that in both the physical and social senses).

Beyond this, the music scene is underated (seriously underated), the sports facilities are fantastic, the musuems and city parks are top notch and for the 2.5 months of summer we get here, everyone lives outside: the beaches open up, everyone dines outside, bicyclists are everywhere and Michigan Ave. is packed.

It really is a great city. I won't miss the winters here, but I will miss the culture.

[coolkatz321]

You have to get out of the airport and off the freeway before you can say you've "been to" LA. I've "been to" Chicago, and it was the most disgusting city I have ever had the misfortune to be stuck in. I know there must be more to it, or why would people put up with that weather. The point is, if you think LA is a shit hole, its only because you don't know any more about LA than I do about Chicago.

The point here is that neither of them are NYC, which is 100 times the city they could ever hope to be. Woohoo!

How's that $1400-per-month studio treating you?

I live in Madison, although I grew up about 45 minutes away from NYC. New York is so much better than Chicago or LA as a city that it's laughable. LA is a spread-out smog-ridden shithole, and Chicago is just...bleh.

[ToTransferOrNot]

1.: I was largely raised in Madison, lived there nearly my entire life, just moved from a place on the lake in Madison to Hyde Park in August. Regret it every time I go outside, haha.

2.: I agree that New York is a "better" city than Chicago, but you have to admit that it is much, much more expensive than Chicago. I don't think New York is "better enough" to justify the much higher CoL, that's all I'm saying.

[algren]

1.: I was largely raised in Madison, lived there nearly my entire life, just moved from a place on the lake in Madison to Hyde Park in August. Regret it every time I go outside, haha.

Well no wonder! You live in Hyde Park! Personally, NOT a favorite neighborhood.... but then again if it's good enough for the leader of the free world......

[articulably suspect]

You couldn't pay me enough to move to a coast--literally, because it would take $195k in LA, $208k in NYC, $209k in DC to match $160k in Chicago. (Admittedly, if you want real cost-of-living benefits, you go to Texas, but... blech, Texas.)

This is what I'm talking about. 160K in NY or CA really doesn't mean much. It is as good as a midlaw salary in Chicago. Yes, your school debt payments stay the same no matter where you work, but you can go so much farther in Chi-town on a similar amount of money. Chicago has bars are open until 4am (5am on Saturdays), it's got a neighborhood for basically every ethnicity, sexual orientation, or social persuasion, it's got more than adequate public transportation, more museums than you can visit in a year, awesome sports teams, and you can rent a decent 1BR for under $1000/month.

I've always marveled at how the aspiring law student community seems to ignore our nation's COL when it comes to average starting salaries of schools. Schools that are geographically close to NY or CA will obviously have a higher median salary Than other schools, but, once you graduate, you will realize how far a 160K salary takes you in NY, LA, or SF. The answer is: not very far, unless you managed to pay well under sticker for promotion. If you can manage to get simply a six-figure salary in Chicago, consider it pretty much equivalent to $160K you would get in NY.

I laughed at the fact that someone thinks a 160k is somehow an unliveable wage or won't take you very far, whatever that means, for those CA cities.

[coolkatz321]

1.: I was largely raised in Madison, lived there nearly my entire life, just moved from a place on the lake in Madison to Hyde Park in August. Regret it every time I go outside, haha.

2.: I agree that New York is a "better" city than Chicago, but you have to admit that it is much, much more expensive than Chicago. I don't think New York is "better enough" to justify the much higher CoL, that's all I'm saying.

NYC really is that much better than Chicago. No one is denying the difference in cost, but I'd take NYC over Chicago every day for the rest of my life.

[DannyJames]

1.: I was largely raised in Madison, lived there nearly my entire life, just moved from a place on the lake in Madison to Hyde Park in August. Regret it every time I go outside, haha.

2.: I agree that New York is a "better" city than Chicago, but you have to admit that it is much, much more expensive than Chicago. I don't think New York is "better enough" to justify the much higher CoL, that's all I'm saying.

NYC really is that much better than Chicago. No one is denying the difference in cost, but I'd take NYC over Chicago every day for the rest of my life.

+1

NYC trumps Chicago in all areas

[CE2JD]

UIUC does suck, unless you wanted to do ID defense monkey shitlaw work and get paid less than my foot masseuse.

/thread

[ainzabo7]

I've been to LA, to, and it is a boring shithole. What it makes up for in weather, it lacks in exciting things to do. The bars close early, the public transportation sucks, and the cost of living is ridiculous.

I agree that the cost of living is high. Yet, where else can you surf and snowboard in the same day? I play soccer outdoors year round. It rains approx. 12 days a year out here. It does not rain from April-Sept AT ALL! Plenty of areas for hiking, climbing and mountain biking. Great restaurants and young people from all over the country. Beach living is great and you can take advantage of it all year round. Sure, bars close at 1:30am but college football starts at 9am out here and that makes for a long day already.

Where in LA did you visit? San Bernardino? Riverside? If you found LA boring, you must hate the outdoors. 2 hours to SD, 6 hours to SF, 4 hours to Vegas.

[articulably suspect]

UIUC does suck, unless you wanted to do ID defense monkey shitlaw work and get paid less than my foot masseuse.

/thread

Thank god someone said it.

[HerseyChris]

Dear Rob Johnson,

Your CERA is a fluke. Please work on your glovework and footwork. You're throwing base stealers out at a respectable rate, but the amount of passed balls you let up is atrocious.
Also, you're batting sucks. Please be the bigger man and advocate Adam Moore as the starting catcher next year.

Thanks,

Mariners fan.

[Rob Johnson]

Bump: for all the people that are now admitted at UIUC and for some reason think it is a good idea to attend in light of the current job market.

[monkeyboy]

Nobody wants to mention the scandals that got almost their entire UG adcomm to resign?

Oh yeah, I read about that recently. He actually helped the children of friends, etc, gain admission to the law school, too. Corruption in Illinois apparently extends beyond Chicago politics.

[NayBoer]

Why does UIUC need a thread like this? What differentiates it from other T30 schools in the Midwest like Iowa, IUB, Minn, and Notre Dame (or for that matter OSU and Wisco) that it needs special negative treatment?

I'm assuming this is some sort of personal vendetta, because the charges leveled in the OP have been made countless times in other threads against more or less every school from Cornell and Georgetown on down. I can't see any other reason to single out one particular T25 in an environment like TLS that ridicules all of them.

Also, the whole "I'm bumping this thread so I can demean the choices other people make" is pretty silly.

As a random, anonymous person on the Internet, you have no credibility or reputation with me; so I can't take your word for it that UIUC is (a) a poor investment or (b) worse than it used to be. If you want people to believe you, cite some objective evidence. If you already have ITT or elsewhere on TLS, please point me in the right direction.

[02082010]

They rejected me. That's enough objective evidence, don't you think?

[09042014]

They rejected me. That's enough objective evidence, don't you think?

Did you find out why?

[02082010]

They rejected me. That's enough objective evidence, don't you think?

Did you find out why?

C&F issues. According to Pless, that's why they WL'ed me last year. And this year he just decided that he didn't want to take a chance. Not sure if what he did was completely legal, but I'm sort of mehh about it anyway. It would have taken a full-ride for me to consider them and w/ the way their OCI was this past year, it probably wouldn't have been enough.

[09042014]

They rejected me. That's enough objective evidence, don't you think?

Did you find out why?

C&F issues. According to Pless, that's why they WL'ed me last year. And this year he just decided that he didn't want to take a chance. Not sure if what he did was completely legal, but I'm sort of mehh about it anyway. It would have taken a full-ride for me to consider them and w/ the way their OCI was this past year, it probably wouldn't have been enough.

Yea I'm only going to go if I don't get T14, and only if I get 50% tuition or better. That goes for any T15-30 school. And I'll only do that because I can do patent law in EE.