People tend to get pissed at Illinois on this board (and elsewhere) because the pretension that they were superior to Wisconsin/Iowa/Indiana/OSU based on their recruiting tactics turned out to have no basis in fact as far as the students were concerned. Illinois got decapitated just like every other T1 school (although apparently not as bad as Notre Dame if those stories are to be believedJCougar wrote: With all due respect to Wisconsin since I would be overjoyed to go there, how many OCIed at Wisconsin this year? They list them on their website, and it didn't look like there was 60 firms. There is a difference in a bad economy. And the difference in a good economy is not "under" 10% in a good economy. Either way, 10% of the class is significant when we're only talking about ~20% of the class having a shot anyway. I can confirm this by looking at the V100 firm websites in Chicago and looking at where their partners went. Sure, you have a good shot at Foley and Quarles & Brady from Madison, but there's simply less options in Wisconsin. Definitely not saying Wisconsin's a bad school, but everything you say about UIUC is also even more true regarding Wisconsin. I agree for the most part, though, attend whichever one is cheaper.
).In the last boom economy cycle (hiring for Summer 2008), Wisconsin had 125 firms and Illinois had 173 at OCI; both figures taken from LSN. So they more or less peaked higher and fell harder in % terms. Making a bet on relative class rank between the two is dumb for reasons already stated. Not only is it the usual "90% of the class think they will wind up in the Top 10%" deal, it's trying to parse if you could finish Top 25% at one versus Top 20% at the other. Not a smart bet.
Illinois is the better bet if you want to work in Chicago at any size firm and it's a marginal better bet if you want to work in a Loop V100 firm, but that's it. If you want NYC/DC out of either, it's not a safe assumption that you can do worse than getting mostly A's & A-'s at either.
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