Located in the vast cornfields of east-central Illinois, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is widely renowned as one of the country’s most influential public research universities. In fact, it has ranked first in National Science Foundation award funding for six consecutive years. Many sources consider UIUC one of the top 50 universities in the world, and some have even ranked its engineering school in the top five worldwide.
When it comes to the student body, UIUC’s middle 50 ACT scores range from 27-33, while middle 50 SAT scores range from 1360-1480. With an acceptance rate of about 66%, UIUC is a fairly selective school.
One final thing to keep in mind is that UIUC is not a Common Application school. That means you’ll have to submit a separate application either on the school’s website or by mail.This also means UIUC won’t be reading your Common App essay, meaning that the school-specific essays count for even more. Read more to understand all our tips and tricks. So, lets dive into prompt 1!
“Additional information that you believe should be included” (200 words)
One big misconception about these sorts of “additional information” questions is that your application hinges on them. On the contrary, these questions best serve to provide more context for your high school situation if the rest of your application is inadequate in doing so. They should never be a mere restatement of information your admission officers can find in the main application.
Because extenuating circumstances range so widely, there’s no set structure to follow for this response. Instead, below we have listed a few examples of suitable topics:
- Perhaps you had a family emergency during class 10 that severel affected your mental health. As a result, your grades suffered
- Maybe you have a special skill/hobby worth mentioning that doesn’t appear anywhere on your activities section. For instance, you can code robots and have been creating simple solutions around your house
- Maybe you moved from a small town to a big city and found it hard to acclimatize.
These are some good things to get your creative motors running! We will continue this conversation with prompt on our next blog post. So keep checking this space! Like, comment, or come meet us if you’re in doubt!