Academics

The University of Illinois consistently ranks among the top public universities in the nation. The campuses in Urbana-Champaign, Chicago and Springfield offer hundreds of undergraduate, graduate and professional programs, many of them among the best in the United States and taught by nationally and internationally respected faculty, including Nobel laureates and Pulitzer prize winners and MacArthur fellows.

Admission to the University is selective and based on factors that best predict a student's likelihood of success in a competitive academic environment.

Highlights

• UIS was named a "best value" public college by Kiplinger's Personal Finance based on the campus' high four-year graduation rates, low average student debt, available student aid and low sticker price.
• Using more than 250 economically and socially diverse Chicago suburbs as a laboratory, UIC's Rebecca Hendrick, the author of Managing the Fiscal Metropolis, analyzed how well local governments deliver services despite the recession, political conflict and loss of corporate taxpayers.
• The U of I generates more STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) graduates than all other Illinois public universities combined.
• Urbana music and theater professor Jeffrey Magee traces the creation of Irving Berlin's theatrical tunes, typically written to fulfill the specifications of a plot yet often with broader appeal, in his book "Irving Berlin's American Musical Theater."
• U of I President Robert Easter hosted some of the state’s most talented students from under-represented minority groups and under-represented Illinois counties during two academic achievement luncheons that also highlighted academic programs at the University.
• UIC College of Medicine-Peoria students and resident physicians have dozens of opportunities to train on a simulated foot and leg with a deep wound laceration thanks to a collaboration with Urbana bioengineering students who developed the inexpensive life-like models.
• Stephen Boppart, an Urbana electrical and computer engineering professor, led a team that developed a new medical imaging device that can see behind the eardrum to better diagnose and treat chronic ear infections, one of a planned suite of 3D diagnostic imaging tools for primary-care physicians.
• Twenty-five faculty members from the three U of I campuses collaborated on an open-source textbook, Sustainability: A Comprehensive Foundation, available free online with print copies selling for about $30.
• The work with adolescent males by UIC education professor Alfred Tatum, founder of the African American Male Summer Literacy Institute, has launched two curricula to advance literacy in middle schools and high schools.
• During the 2012 summer, Urbana journalism professor Nancy Benson led a group of nine undergraduates on a foreign reporting trip to Turkey, where the group chronicled their journey online using blog posts, stories, and Twitter and submitted their articles to a PBS station in Chicago.
• The University of Illinois Hospital & Health Sciences System includes a 495-bed hospital, an outpatient facility, specialty clinics, seven health science colleges including the College of Medicine, with a commitment to a positive and lasting difference in people's lives.
• Named "Outstanding Research Park" of 2011 by the Association of University Research Parks, the University of Illinois Research Park, which started Phase IV infrastructure expansion in 2012, has an annual payroll of $81 million and contributes $5.4 million in tax revenue to the state and Champaign County. Many students have internships or are employed at companies located in the Research Park.
• The University of Illinois co-sponsored Think Chicago, a program that connected university juniors and seniors with industry leaders across a diverse range of fields and showcased post-graduation opportunities.
• The U of I Health System is the first academic medical center in the Midwest to use femtosecond (one-quadrillionth of a second) laser technology to fragment clouded lens for removal during cataract surgery, a technique that has been incorporated in ophthalmology resident training.