Illinois, constituent state of the United States of America. It stretches southward 385 miles (620 km) from the Wisconsin border in the north to Cairo in the south. In addition to Wisconsin, the state borders Lake Michigan to the northeast, Indiana to the east, Kentucky to the southeast, Missouri to the west, and Iowa to the northwest. Illinois was named for the Illinois Indians. The capital is Springfield, in the west-central part of the state.
Admitted as the 21st member of the union on December 3, 1818, Illinois lies within both the so-called old industrial belt and the fertile agricultural heart of the country. The presence of Chicago, one of the country’s most prominent cities, creates sharp distinctions between the state’s largest urban and suburban northeast and the more evenly balanced urban-rural population downstate. In political life, Illinois is divided between Cook County (which contains much of the Chicago metropolitan area) and “downstate”—that is, all the other counties, even those north of Cook, such as Lake County. although its northern portion touches the Upper Midwest, its southern point is farther south than Richmond, Virginia, and has great affinities with neighboring Kentucky and Missouri. Further contrasts derive from the racial and ethnic complexity of the population.
In the field of higher education, Illinois offers a wide array of opportunities, and its academic excellence is often noted. Sectarian and non affiliated private institutions are scattered throughout the state. The University of Chicago (chartered in 1890) is respected as one of the finest institutions of higher learning in the country. Northwestern University (1851), in Evanston, is also nationally renowned and has a distinguished faculty in several areas, as does the Illinois Institute of Technology (formed by the merger of two earlier institutions in 1940), in Chicago. The state system of higher education includes eight colleges and universities anchored by the University of Illinois (1867), with campuses at Champaign-Urbana, Chicago, and Springfield; one of the Big Ten schools, it is also a major research institution. Among the other state schools are Southern Illinois University (SIU; 1869), with campuses in Carbondale and Edwardsville, and Illinois State University (1857) in Normal. There are also more than 60 community colleges and technical schools in Illinois.
University of Illinois—Urbana-Champaign is a public institution that was founded in 1867. It has a total undergraduate enrollment of 33,683 (fall 2020), its setting is a city, and the campus size is 1,783 acres. It utilizes a semester-based academic calendar. University of Illinois—Urbana-Champaign’s ranking in the 2023 edition of Top Colleges is National Universities, #47.
Grad rate | Tuition fees |
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86% | $15,016 |
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