The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign sits in an unusual place among the nation’s large public flagships. It is a Big Ten research university with a top-ranked engineering school, a computer science department whose undergraduate admit rate is now lower than several Ivies, a business school with one of the best reputations in the country, and a downstate campus enrolling roughly 37,000 undergraduates on a single contiguous quad. It is also, at the same time, a remarkably inexpensive option for in-state students. Tuition has been functionally flat for most of the past decade, and Illinois residents from families earning $75,000 or less receive a complete tuition-and-fees waiver under the Illinois Commitment program. Few institutions of this caliber and scale offer a residency-specific cost structure as favorable as the one Illinois has built and maintained.
The five-year window covered by this report has been a period of substantial change at the application end and considerable stability at the enrollment end. First-time, first-year applications grew from 47,593 for Fall 2021 to 83,045 for Fall 2025, a 75 percent increase over four cycles. The overall admit rate fell from roughly 60 percent to 36.6 percent across the same period. The entering class held within a fairly narrow 7,957 to 9,207 band, with size driven less by selectivity than by housing capacity. Yield, perhaps the most idiosyncratic number in the file, sat at 28 to 30 percent throughout, low for a flagship of this profile but consistent with a school whose admits are heavy cross-applicants to other Big Ten and selective private universities.
What the headline admit rate conceals, and what makes Illinois genuinely different from most flagships, is the variation in selectivity by major. Illinois admits by college and program. The published Fall 2025 admit rate for first-choice applicants to Computer Science was 7.4 percent, comparable to the overall admit rates at the most selective private universities. Gies College of Business came in at 20.9 percent. Grainger Engineering at 21.2 percent overall. The College of Agricultural, Consumer & Environmental Sciences at 48.5 percent. Treating Illinois’ institutional admit rate as the prevailing standard, the way many guidebooks still do, gives families a thoroughly misleading view of what a competitive application requires.
What follows is a five-year read of Illinois’ Common Data Set filings, supplemented by the university’s own admissions announcements and by public reporting where the CDS leaves a gap, with particular attention to the threads that do not appear in any single section of the form: the Common App transition, the Illinois Commitment, the by-major admit structure, and the test-optional posture that has now stretched into a fifth cycle with no announced reversal.
Applications, admit rate, and yield
The clearest single story in Illinois’ five-year data is application growth. Volume grew in every cycle, and the cumulative shift is striking. The largest single-year jump came between the Fall 2021 and Fall 2022 cycles, which coincided with Illinois’ first year on the Common Application. The university had previously used its own myIllini platform and the Coalition Application; the Common App addition delivered an immediate 33 percent increase in volume. Subsequent cycles added a further 6.5 percent, 9.4 percent, and 12.6 percent. The Fall 2025 cycle set a new institutional record at 83,045 first-year applications, the largest applicant pool in any year of Illinois’ history.
| Fall 2021 | Fall 2022 | Fall 2023 | Fall 2024 | Fall 2025 | |
| Total applicants | 47,593 | 63,257 | 67,398 | 73,742 | 83,045 |
| Total admitted | 28,395 | 28,354 | 29,446 | 31,247 | 30,384 |
| Total enrolled | 8,303 | 7,957 | 8,325 | 9,008 | 9,207 |
| Overall admit rate | 59.7% | 44.8% | 43.7% | 42.4% | 36.6% |
| Yield rate | 29.2% | 28.1% | 28.3% | 28.8% | 30.3% |
Sources: UIUC Common Data Sets 2021–22 through 2025–26, Section C1. Admit and yield rates calculated as percentages of total applicants and total admitted, respectively.
The class size has been the steadiest line on the page. Illinois enrolled between 7,957 and 9,207 first-year students each fall across the five cycles, with the higher end reflecting a deliberate expansion tied to housing capacity and out-of-state demand. Admit volume held in a remarkably tight 28,400 to 31,300 band even as the applicant pool grew by more than 35,000. The admit rate compression that resulted is therefore almost entirely a denominator story, not a story about Illinois turning down more students.
Yield is the more interesting number for understanding Illinois’ competitive position. A 28 to 30 percent yield is low for a flagship of this academic profile, the closest peer comparison being The Ohio State University. UIUC’s admits cross-apply heavily to Northwestern, Michigan, Purdue, Wisconsin, Indiana, and a long list of selective privates, and they choose Illinois at modest rates by the standards of a school its size. The implication for prospective applicants is that an Illinois admit, even into a competitive program, often carries the negotiating power of options elsewhere; for Illinois itself, an applicant pool of 83,000 yields just 9,200 enrollees, requiring a 3.3-to-1 over-admit ratio to fill the class.
In-state, out-of-state, and the geographic shift
Illinois began separating its CDS applicant data into residency categories with the Fall 2023 cycle. The three-year picture available from 2023 forward shows a flagship that has been quietly recruiting a greater number of international and out-of-state students while still drawing a strong majority of its entering class from Illinois.
| Fall 2023 | Fall 2024 | Fall 2025 | |
| In-state applicants | 26,994 | 27,730 | 29,419 |
| Out-of-state applicants | 23,890 | 27,575 | 32,702 |
| International applicants | 16,514 | 18,437 | 20,924 |
| In-state admit rate | 56.2% | 54.4% | 49.3% |
| Out-of-state admit rate | 35.9% | 36.2% | 29.0% |
| International admit rate | 34.5% | 33.5% | 30.5% |
| In-state enrolled | 6,150 | 6,429 | 6,587 |
| Out-of-state enrolled | 1,088 | 1,346 | 1,210 |
| International enrolled | 1,087 | 1,233 | 1,410 |
Source: UIUC Common Data Sets 2023–24 through 2025–26, Section C1 residency tables. The 2021–22 and 2022–23 filings did not include residency breakdowns.
Three shifts in this table stand out. The in-state admit rate dropped below 50 percent for the first time on record in the Fall 2025 cycle. Out-of-state applicants now face a sub-30 percent admit rate, on par with admit rates at many highly selective privates. International applicants are admitted at roughly 30 percent. The class still skews about 72 percent in-state at the enrolling stage, but the trajectory at the application end suggests Illinois is increasingly competing in the same applicant market as Michigan, Wisconsin, and Purdue for non-resident students.
The yield differential between residencies explains the structural pattern. Illinois yields its in-state admits at roughly 45 percent, out-of-state at 13 percent, and international at 22 percent. To pull 1,200 enrolled out-of-state students into the class, the admissions office must admit nearly 9,500. That ratio is sustainable only because the applicant pool keeps growing; if non-resident applications were to plateau, the admit rate gap between in-state and out-of-state would narrow significantly.
Admit by major: the most important number not on the CDS
The Common Data Set treats institutional selectivity as a single number. At Illinois, that convention seriously distorts the picture. Illinois admits to a specific college and a specific major, and the admit rate varies by an order of magnitude across the catalog. The university publishes its by-major admit rates on its admissions website, an unusual move for a flagship of its profile and one of the more useful disclosures any large public university makes.
| Fall 2025 admit rate by program | Admit rate |
| Total institutional admit rate | 36.6% |
| First-choice major admit rate | 30.2% |
| Computer Science (Grainger) | 7.4% |
| Computer Science + X programs | 17.4% |
| Gies College of Business | 20.9% |
| Grainger College of Engineering (overall) | 21.2% |
| Applied Health Sciences | 28.0% |
| Liberal Arts & Sciences | 36.4% |
| Fine & Applied Arts | 40.8% |
| Education | 42.6% |
| Media | 42.8% |
| Social Work | 44.6% |
| Information Sciences | 48.1% |
| Agricultural, Consumer & Environmental Sciences | 48.5% |
| Exploratory Studies (undeclared) | 53.4% |
Source: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Office of Undergraduate Admissions, published admit rates page (admissions.illinois.edu/apply/freshman/admit-rate). College admit rates reflect first-choice applicants only.
The Computer Science admit rate at 7.4 percent is the headline. Stand-alone CS at Illinois is admitted at a rate that sits alongside the overall admit rates of the most selective Ivy-plus universities. The Computer Science + X blended programs, which pair CS with a partner discipline like statistics, mathematics, music, or anthropology, are admitted at a higher 17.4 percent but are still meaningfully more competitive than the institutional headline. CS at Illinois is functionally an Ivy-level admit at a Big Ten address. Students who cannot get into CS but want to be at Illinois will find the major-switch route explicitly closed. The university states that students cannot change majors into Computer Science once enrolled, removing the back-door route that families occasionally try at large public universities.
Gies Business at 20.9 percent and Grainger Engineering at 21.2 percent overall are the two other competitive bottlenecks. Both are more selective than UIUC was overall during the Fall 2020 admissions cycle, the last year before Common App adoption. The College of Liberal Arts & Sciences at 36.4 percent is essentially the institutional average, which makes intuitive sense given that LAS is the largest college and absorbs the largest share of applicants. The colleges with admit rates above 40 percent are real options for applicants whose academic profiles would not clear the CS or Grainger bar, and Illinois’ own admissions office encourages students whose primary interest lies in those fields to apply directly to them rather than treating LAS or Exploratory Studies as a backdoor.
Testing policy and the academic profile
Illinois went test-optional in response to COVID for the Fall 2021 cycle by Board of Trustees resolution and has remained so through the most recent cycle. The CDS lists testing as “Not required for admission, but considered if submitted,” and the university has not announced a return to required testing. Among Big Ten flagships, Illinois is one of several that has kept a test-optional posture.
The share of enrolled first-year students submitting tests has shifted accordingly. In Fall 2021, 43 percent submitted SAT scores and 24 percent submitted ACT scores. By Fall 2025, those numbers were 43 percent and 14 percent, suggesting just over half the entering class submitted scores. Those who do submit are scoring in a tight, high band.
| Fall 2021 | Fall 2022 | Fall 2023 | Fall 2024 | Fall 2025 | |
| SAT submission rate | 43% | 44% | 40% | 41% | 43% |
| ACT submission rate | 24% | 20% | 16% | 14% | 14% |
| SAT Composite (25–75 pct) | 1340–1510 | 1350–1510 | 1350–1510 | 1390–1520 | 1390–1520 |
| SAT Math (25–75 pct) | 680–790 | 680–790 | 680–790 | 700–790 | 700–790 |
| ACT Composite (25–75 pct) | 29–34 | 29–34 | 30–34 | 30–34 | 31–34 |
Source: UIUC Common Data Sets 2021–22 through 2025–26, Section C9. Submission rates are of enrolled first-year students, not applicants.
The score distribution has crept upward across the five years. SAT Composite 25th-percentile climbed from 1340 to 1390, and the ACT 25th-percentile from 29 to 31. The 75th-percentile SAT now sits at 1520, in line with several Ivies and within 30 points of Stanford. Math scores in particular cluster at the very top. Seventy-seven percent of SAT submitters scored 700 or higher on the math section in Fall 2025, and the median SAT Math is now 760. The reading and writing distribution is also strong, with 70 percent scoring 700 or higher on EBRW. This is a test-optional school whose submitting cohort is testing essentially at Ivy levels.
Illinois does not publish high school GPA distributions on its CDS, but the admissions office does publish an averaged middle-50 percent unweighted GPA range of 3.65 to 4.00 for admitted students across the most recent three cycles, with the caveat that this range varies meaningfully by college. CS, Gies, and Grainger admits cluster at the top of that range; admits to Agricultural Sciences, Education, and Exploratory Studies cluster at or just below the 3.65 floor for the institution. Class rank is not considered at Illinois, a notable shift from the practice of many large state flagships that still factor it heavily.
What Illinois says it values
Illinois’ C7 admission factors grid was relatively conservative for most of the five-year window, then shifted in the most recent cycle. For Fall 2021 and Fall 2022, the factors marked “Very Important” were Rigor of Secondary School Record and Academic GPA. Standardized test scores, Application Essay, and First-Generation status sat at “Important.” Test scores were downgraded to “Considered” beginning with the 2023–24 CDS, reflecting the test-optional reality, and have stayed there.
The Fall 2025 cycle introduced a more meaningful shift. Four nonacademic factors moved from “Important” to “Very Important”: Extracurricular Activities, Talent/Ability, Character/Personal Qualities, and First-Generation status. Read together, these changes are the technical signal of a fully holistic, post-test-optional review. With test scores demoted and submission rates around 50 percent, the office has elevated the weight of essays and the activities list to fill the evaluative gap. The Application Essay remains at “Important.” Illinois requires the Common App personal statement plus its own short writing prompts, and the prompts have shifted to be more pointed about why a student is applying to a specific major. A serious applicant to Grainger, Gies, or CS should not treat the major-specific prompt as a checkbox; it is one of the few places where the application speaks directly to fit.
Two factors are notable for their absence. Level of Applicant’s Interest is marked “Not Considered,” and the office has publicly confirmed that campus visits, info session attendance, and email engagement carry no weight in the admissions file. Recommendations are also “Not Considered.” Illinois does not accept letters as part of the standard application, and the office has stated that unsolicited materials will be discarded. For students whose strongest credential is a teacher or counselor endorsement, this is a meaningful absence relative to other Big Ten institutions like Michigan that weigh recommendations heavily.
Early action and the application platform
Illinois offers nonbinding, non-restrictive Early Action and Regular Decision. There is no Early Decision. EA applications are due November 1 with decisions in late January. RD applications are due January 5 with decisions released on a rolling basis through April. The university publicly states that EA does not confer an admissions advantage over RD; review standards are identical. What EA provides is earlier notification and earlier access to housing registration, which at Illinois has been a non-trivial issue since the 2023 housing crunch. The modest fall in absolute admit count from 31,247 in Fall 2024 to 30,384 in Fall 2025 likely reflects that capacity constraint.
The university accepts only the Common Application for first-year applicants as of the Fall 2026 cycle; myIllini and Coalition options were phased out. Combined with the absence of any required letters of recommendation, the Illinois application is one of the more efficient a strong student can complete: a Common App personal statement, Illinois short prompts, an activities list, the Self-Reported Academic Record, and, optionally, test scores.
Tuition, fees, and the Illinois Commitment
Illinois has been notably restrained on tuition during this five-year window. Base in-state tuition for first-year students moved from $12,474 in the Fall 2021 academic year to $12,992 in the Fall 2025 academic year, a four-year increase of roughly 4 percent in nominal terms, well below CPI inflation over the same period. Illinois held in-state tuition flat for five years through FY2019 under a Board of Trustees freeze, then resumed modest increases; within this window it raised base tuition in two small steps, in 2022 and 2024, and held it flat in the intervening years. Required fees, food, and housing rose more substantially, with the total cost of attendance for in-state students reaching the low-$30,000 range for the 2025–26 academic year.
| Fall 2021 | Fall 2022 | Fall 2023 | Fall 2024 | Fall 2025 | |
| Tuition (in-state, first-year) | $12,474 | $12,712 | $12,712 | $12,992 | $12,992 |
| Tuition (out-of-state) | $30,446 | $31,208 | $31,832 | $33,344 | $33,344 |
| Required fees | $4,664 | $4,860 | $4,928 | $5,056 | $5,054 |
| Food and housing (on-campus) | $12,354 | $12,972 | $14,020 | $15,184 | $15,184 |
| COA (in-state, on-campus) | $29,492 | $30,544 | $31,660 | $33,232 | $33,230 |
| COA (out-of-state, on-campus) | $47,464 | $49,040 | $50,780 | $53,584 | $53,582 |
Sources: UIUC Common Data Sets 2021–22 through 2025–26, Section G1. Out-of-state COA excludes international/non-resident surcharge of roughly $1,000 per year. COA figures are tuition + fees + on-campus food and housing; do not include books, transportation, or personal expenses.
Where Illinois has chosen to spend institutional money is on need-based aid. The amount of need-based institutional grant aid awarded grew from $119 million in the 2021–22 reporting cycle to $156 million in the 2025–26 cycle, a 31 percent increase. Average need-based grant awards for first-year students rose from roughly $16,990 to $25,878, a 52 percent increase. The percentage of demonstrated need met for first-year students rose from 72 percent to 82 percent across the same span. None of these numbers describes a flagship that has gotten more expensive; they describe one that has held sticker price flat and pushed substantially more institutional money toward students who need it.
The mechanism that drives much of this is the Illinois Commitment, which began in 2018 and has been expanded twice since. The original program waived tuition and fees for Illinois residents from families earning $61,000 or less. The threshold was raised to $67,100 in 2020. In Fall 2025, it was raised again to $75,000, with an added $75,000 asset cap. Eligibility requires Illinois residency, U.S. citizenship or eligible non-citizen status, and FAFSA filing; nothing else is required, and the program stacks on top of Federal Pell and Illinois MAP grants. For an Illinois resident with a Pell-eligible family, the price of attendance for tuition and fees is effectively zero. Food and housing are not covered by the Commitment, but Pell and MAP awards typically chip materially into those costs, and Illinois’ average reported student loan debt at graduation ($20,305) is well below both the state average ($28,552) and the national average ($29,096).
International undergraduates are not eligible for need-based institutional aid at Illinois, and merit aid for non-resident students is limited. This is the structural reason the Illinois sticker price for a non-resident family that does not qualify for substantial merit can land in the high $50,000s annually, on par with or exceeding many private competitors. Out-of-state families should run the net price calculator early; for many, the net cost will be meaningfully higher than at a private university with stronger need-based aid for non-resident students.
Class composition, retention, and outcomes
Illinois’ first-year class composition has been broadly stable across the five years: roughly 35 percent White (non-Hispanic), 22 percent Asian, 15 to 16 percent Hispanic/Latino, 5 percent Black or African American, and 5 percent multiracial, with about 14 percent international (reported as Nonresidents in CDS terminology). The Asian share is among the highest at any large public flagship outside California. The Hispanic share has grown modestly across the period, and Black enrollment has held in a narrow 440 to 480 range, lower than the share suggested by Illinois’ in-state college-going population.
Retention rates have improved across the period and now sit among the higher figures reported at any large public flagship. First-year to second-year retention for the Fall 2024 entering cohort was 95.3 percent, up from 93.5 percent for the Fall 2020 cohort. Six-year graduation rates for the Fall 2019 cohort came in at 86.3 percent overall, with the four-year rate at 74.3 percent. The gap between Pell recipients and non-Pell, non-Stafford recipients in the six-year rate has narrowed to roughly 8 percentage points (81 percent versus 89 percent), modest by national standards and a meaningful sign that Illinois has been able to support its lower-income students through to degree completion.
Closing observations
Five points stand out for families currently weighing Illinois.
First, the institutional admit rate is the wrong number to plan around. A 36.6 percent overall admit rate is meaningfully more competitive than it was five years ago, but the spread by college tells the real story. CS at 7.4 percent and CS + X at 17.4 percent are reach programs for nearly any applicant. Gies Business and Grainger Engineering are competitive admits even for students with strong academic profiles. The colleges with admit rates above 40 percent are realistic targets for solid in-state applicants with 3.7-plus GPAs. A student’s actual chances at Illinois are set by the college admit rate, not the institutional one, and the application should be built around the specific major from the start.
Second, the major-switch route into competitive programs is closed. Students who hope to enter through Liberal Arts and switch into CS once on campus will find that the university has explicitly disallowed this. Gies and Grainger also have strict intercollegiate transfer policies. The practical entry point to the competitive programs is the application itself, and applicants who treat the college choice as provisional are likely to find themselves locked out of the major they actually want.
Third, the Illinois Commitment changes the cost calculation for in-state families more than most realize. A family at or below the $75,000 threshold pays nothing for tuition and fees, full stop. The combination of Illinois Commitment, Pell, and MAP brings the all-in cost of attendance for a moderate-income Illinois resident into a range that competes with community college plus transfer. Illinois’ average graduate debt at $20,305 is roughly $9,000 lower than the national average, and that gap is widening. For a strong in-state student from a moderate-income family, few flagships in the country offer a better value proposition right now.
Fourth, the testing question still carries weight even though the policy is test-optional. Roughly half of enrolled students submitted scores in Fall 2025, and the submitter cohort’s scores are at Ivy levels. A student whose tests are at or above the 25th-percentile band for the major they are applying to should submit. A student whose tests fall well below the institutional middle 50 percent should not. CS, Gies, and Grainger applicants in particular should assume that strong test scores strengthen their candidacy in a context where nearly everyone’s GPA looks competitive; the test is the easiest way to differentiate within the academic profile.
Fifth, the demonstrated-interest answer at Illinois is nuanced. The university’s formal C7 grid lists Level of Applicant’s Interest as “Not Considered,” and the office has stated publicly that interest is not factored into admission decisions. Even so, student contacts with admissions may register unofficially in the file, and the broader benefits of engaging with the institution (better information about majors, awareness of deadlines, familiarity with the housing process) are real. A campus visit is not essential, but lower-cost actions, like requesting information through the admissions website, registering for virtual tours or info sessions, or meeting with the Illinois rep at a high school visit, are worth doing for the information value alone. The school’s admissions blog is one of the more useful institutional self-disclosures in higher education and merits a read by any serious applicant.
