Sorority Member/Engineer

Introduction
I came here mainly for the engineering school. Since I am from out of state, this school had relatively inexpensive out of state tuition compared to some of the other schools I was looking at.

It wasn’t a big adjustment. It is still the Midwest. The people were a lot like my friends at home.

The sports scene here is a big deal. The football games are a lot of fun. Especially being in a House, we have football block with fraternities where we go to a bar beforehand and drink and party before the games. There is a lot of tailgating that goes on out here in the fields. Basketball season is a big deal, especially this year since we went all the way to the championship game. We have Orange Krush which is the student cheering section during the game. Basically how you get into that is you have to be part of a group called Illini Pride. Through that you raise money for a charity by going around and getting pledges from people. They pledge a given amount of money per 3 point shot made that season. So if during the season 250 3 point shots are made, that person has to pay 250 times however much they pledged. You have to raise one dollar fifty to get into the Orange Krush and three dollars to be All-American. The difference there is that if you raise over three dollars you don’t have to wait in line. You can go to the game an hour beforehand and get in. If you don’t raise that much money, then you end up waiting a really long time outside the gates before game time.

Campus Life and Social Life
The reputation of the engineering school here is very good. We are ranked 3rd of 4th in the nation. A couple of the programs are ranked first. It is very competitive just because we are so well-known. A lot of research goes on through the engineering school.

My Major which is general engineering has more girls in it. As you get more into computer engineering or mechanical engineering, there are less and less girls. For example, in one of my classes, there are 40 people, and I am one of 4 or 5 girls in the class. It isn’t so bad. You just get used to it after awhile.

There will be weeks when the workload is worse than others. For example, I have 3 projects due next week and a lot of homework, so this week won’t be such a fun week. There are weeks, like after a test, when things calm down. But there is pretty much always a lot of work going on. Time management is very important.
Co-op is similar to having an internship. I co-op right now. I have a job with a company and I work with them for 4 semesters. I alternate working with them and going to school. I started co-oping with them last spring so I went to work for that semester. And then I went back to school for the summer. Then I went back to work for the fall. It alternates like that until I fulfill my requirements with them. It delays a year of graduation. But the reason why people do that is because since you go back to a company more than once, you get more in-depth projects so you get a pretty experience than you would if you were to just go get an internship for one semester.

Now that I am getting into more specific classes for my Major, the professors are more there for personal attention since they are getting to know us more. They always have office hours and they are very approachable. I generally have had very good TAs. Some of them have not been as good as others, like if they don’t speak English as well then you can’t really understand them. But I’ve never had a problem where I wasn’t able to go talk to a professor if I was having a problem in the class. Academics
I joined a sorority a year later than everyone else. Most people join freshman year but I ended up joining sophomore year. Which is fine, I still had a good experience. The Greek life here is a lot of fun because we have exchanges, formals, barn dances and football block. There are a lot of things you can take part in or not take part in. There is a lot of opportunity for leadership experience.

Student Body
I think a huge part of that is because we have such a large Greek system. We have the largest Greek system in the country, I think, so there is always some frat party. We have a lot of apartments very close to campus, so people are always having apartment parties. I think one of the reasons this was voted such a big party school is because you only have to be 19 to get into the bars. Freshman year you are able to get into the bars and go out, whereas at a lot of schools, you have to wait until you are 21 to go out.

In Closing...
I lived in the dorms for 2 years. After awhile you always find something to eat, whether it is just a salad or whatever they were serving as the main dish. You will always find something. If not, they always have late night meals of pizza and sandwiches. The dorm food isn’t terrible; you can always find something to eat. If not, you can go in with points and just get something late night, like pizza or cereal.