UIC campuses

[Michael845]

I'm OOS applying to UIC. I love Chicago (my 40 cousins and 10 sets of aunts/uncles are all there) but don't know anything about peoria, rockford, urbana..

Does anyone have any insight into the other 3 campuses? City/town life aspects, or med school aspects?

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[WinterLights]

I'm OOS applying to UIC. I love Chicago (my 40 cousins and 10 sets of aunts/uncles are all there) but don't know anything about peoria, rockford, urbana..

Does anyone have any insight into the other 3 campuses? City/town life aspects, or med school aspects?

Urbana is where the UofI's main campus is located. Population is around 120,000. There is a decent amount to do there as far as bars/shopping/entertainment goes. Peoria is a moderately sized city. The metropolitan area has around 370,000 people living in it. Has gambling/shopping/restaurants. Sits near a river which is nice. Rockford has 340,000 people. From my experience there is a decent amount to do there, just like in any other city in the midwest. However, it has a more industrial feel to it when compaired to Peoria or Champaign; lots of factories and the like throughout. Rockford also sits on a river system; again a positive. I would not recommend any of them if you want a rural setting or an urban setting (e.g. LA, NY, Chicago, Houston, etc).

 

[notdeadyet]

Coming purely as an OOSer, I can say that Urbana seemed like a nice typical college town. Very liveable. I personally found Rockford to be pretty awful. It reminded me of lots of restbelt industrial cities trying to scrape back from hard times. It also struck me as the kind of place that you'd pretty much have to drive to go anywhere. I'd definitely visit before making my decision.

 

[Michael845]

thanks!

 

[bcat85]

I liked chicago, and would have been alright with UC, but I was placed in Peoria. I didn't like the city quite that much... seemed kinda rural, but the 370k metro area kinda surprised me.

 

[WinterLights]

My overall rank of each city:

1. Champaign-Urbana
2. Peoria
3. Rockford.

With Peoria and Champaign being relatively close in rank. Rockford is not a terrible city but it really is lacking when compared to the other two. The major plus for Peoria over Champaign is the River and hilly terrain.

 

[nontrdgsbuiucmd]

My overall rank of each city:

1. Champaign-Urbana
2. Peoria
3. Rockford.

With Peoria and Champaign being relatively close in rank. Rockford is not a terrible city but it really is lacking when compared to the other two. The major plus for Peoria over Champaign is the River and hilly terrain.

thanks for posting!

I spent 3 yrs in champaign/urbana undergraduate & am a chicago native, nice city (c/u), very college town oriented, student population makes up a huge chunk of the entire town's population. Don't recall the exact figures, I thought it was around 40-60%, though. Which makes summers pretty quiet when most students are gone. It is somewhat of a party town, ie big groups of heavily inebriated folk wander around after 1pm closing time. But the town is big enough that larger bands/symphonies come to town, there's a fair amount of cultural life there.

I believe that if you start out at c/u you transfer to the uic campus after 2nd year, or has this changed?

My concern with the Chicago campus is that it's massively urban, I don't see a commute from the suburbs to the UIC campus being very easy. Probably the best campus choice if you want an urban, diverse, environment, and I enjoyed it as a teenager much more than after having kids. Definitely need to keep an eye on safety when you're in Chicago, which was not an issue at all in champaign urbana.