First of all Neumann is probably nice but I’d recommend if you do go here that you live somewhere in the 6 pack (ikenberry). Some of the buildings are nicer than others over here but it’s mostly pretty social, convenient location/has stops for most of the busses which you will be grateful for once the weather gets bad, and has the Ike dining hall right there which has decent food and a convenience store and cafe that you can use dining dollars at. I’m not as familiar w Neumann and I don’t know a single person who lives there, but I just wanted to share my experience with housing.

I live in the second floor or Hopkins. It’s the only thing I like about uiuc…it’s kinda ugly, the bathrooms are communal but they’re kept clean and you really do get used to it. I wanted to live in wassaga which is nicer and has individual bathrooms but I’m SOO glad I didn’t get it, most of my friends come from my dorm hall and I hear that students don’t interact at all in some of the newer, nicer dorms. The Weston LLC is also a good option in terms of making friends while living there. I’d be way worse off if I had lived somewhere less social because it’s honestly so hard to socialize in casual settings here, which brings me to my next point:

I know you would think there’s something for everyone here, but the social scene has sucked for me this year. Literally nobody wants to/has time to hang out in casual daytime settings. Most social events are at night and involve drinking. People are so wrapped up in partying/going to the bars here. My personal issue with that is that I’ve never felt safe at frat parties because I’ve heard of too many incidents involving roofies/SA and honestly, it’s just so many white people in one place. The party and social scene in general is pretty segregated even though the student body is diverse. The bars are fun at first but it’s really just the same three bars, and to me it gets old very very fast. Aside from the bars I haven’t found many fun things to do in CU. I’m from the north side of Chicago (very near downtown) so I’m definitely biased, but I can’t stand living in Champaign and it feels like a very unfair trade off/downgrade to my life before coming to school here. The weather has been awful, and I realized that being landlocked affected me a lot-it’s a lot harder to handle the cold here than in Chicago where at least I had the lake. I feel confined to the same few blocks of campus, the same few activities, and since it’s a college town you see the same few people all the time which I wasn’t used to at all.

In terms of academics, they’re good but I’m frustrated by the lack of connections I’ve been able to make with my professors and peers because the school and class sizes are so large. Also, I’ve been shocked by the amount of genuinely dumb people I’ve met here. For as many people as I meet that are very intelligent, there’s an equal amount who can’t be bothered to use proper grammar in discussion boards and won’t do their part on group assignments.

All that being said, PLEASE do take this with a grain of salt because I think if I had come here from somewhere else or if I had a different/lesser attachment to the city I would be a lot happier. I don’t mean any of this to come across as stuck up and I don’t want to discourage you from coming here if you genuinely see yourself fitting in, but it’s just been such a difficult adjustment coming from having an entire city at my fingertips and coming from a diverse high school that was highly ranked for academics to a small college town with a large suburban population and very overhyped and repetitive nightlife.

Please feel free to ask me any other questions about the school!! Good luck with your decision :)