Kind of a mouthful, but worth every letter. Located in the twin little cities of Urbana and Champaign, the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign is the flagship school of the University of Illinois system, and is a member of the Big Ten Conference. The campus boasts one of the biggest libraries in the country, and the school offers more than 150 programs of study. They are leading the field in innovative science and medical research, not to mention environmental studies: the groundbreaking Office of Sustainability was founded here only a few years ago. The University of Illinois is crazy about athletics, too, with their team 'The Fighting Illini' (we're talking serious football here, they even have their own homepage).
Urbana is a sizeable town of 41,250 in the eastern middle of the state, surrounded by vast prairie. Around these parts, half of university students live off campus. Thinking of joining them? Get some apartment hunting tips from our apartment guide. If you're lucky, you might land a place in one of the modest apartment complexes just north of the main quad, near East Springfield Avenue. If you go east, that's in Urbana; west is Champaign. There are apartments available all throughout the area, generally affordable. Using our college life link, you can get a sense of how your social and academic routine might affect where you should live.
The free-for-students MTD buses not only take you all around the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign campus, but to locations throughout the surrounding town. For leaving town, you can count on Greyhound buses or even the Suburban Express. You could go for a scenic adventure to Crystal Lake Park, where they regularly put on outdoor public events. There are also numerous golf courses and country clubs in the area. And convenient public transportation gives you access to the town's vibrant nightlife; on any given weekend, you can peruse the various bars and restaurants around Green and Wright streets. Two good resources for staying in the loop with coming events are the Daily Illini newspaper, and the CU Calendar online.