 My name is Meacham. Welcome to the Score Channel. It's episode two of University, where we help you find the best university for you. This time we're looking at Illinois Institute of Technology, also known as IIT or Illinois Tech. It's the only STEM school located in the amazing city of Chicago, literally one of my favorite places on planet Earth. To learn a little bit more about Illinois Tech, say hello to Tyler Hardy. My name is Tyler Hardy. I'm an international admission counselor at the Illinois Institute of Technology. I work primarily with international students from the Western Hemisphere and India. New York gets all the hype and LA gets all the attention because it has great weather. But Chicago is really where it's at, people. Going to a university that's literally in downtown Chicago is just an awesome opportunity. Here's why. Being within the city of Chicago, Illinois Tech is actually 15 to 20 minutes from downtown Chicago via the CTA, which is the train system within the city of Chicago. Right near our campus is the Lake Michigan Lakefront as well. So during the summer, students do love to hang out along the lakefront. Besides that, within the city of Chicago, there's so much to do. Music festivals, museums, restaurants, Chinatown. I'm right by Little Vietnam, it's really great. You find pockets like that all over the city of Chicago, which is really cool. Obviously just being in Chicago doesn't make the university great. You know what does? A good education. One of the best metrics that you can use to determine if a university really does give you a good education is the student to faculty ratio. At IIT, that number is quite literally 12 to one. But what that means for our undergraduate population is that there's a lot of great research opportunities for these students specifically at Illinois Tech because they can collaborate with these graduate students and grad professors. Illinois Tech also has some pretty cool spaces for you to actually make those projects come to life. We do have a new innovation center on campus called the Kaplan Institute. It's basically a communal space where students can come together and develop projects, work with faculty with research. The building's really, really cool because it was actually designed to vary the amount of solar energy that's coming in the room. On our campus, we also have what's known as an idea shop. This is housed within our Kaplan Institute. It's basically a collaborative space for research. It houses 3D printers and scanners, CNC milling machines, a vacuum former, and a laser cutter. This is open for class projects, research, or your very own project. One example I always love to give is the X-Cube. One of our students decided that the Rubik's Cube was a little too easy for them. So they actually developed what is known as the X-Cube. What's even more exciting is that your projects aren't just class assignments. With the I-Pro program, you actually get to solve real-world problems. Say you may be a mechanical engineering major, you may get into a group with majors in business, computer science, architecture. You work to identify a real-world problem and then come up with solutions to this problem. The thing that's really cool is that our campus is right by the Chicago White Sox Baseball Stadium, and they needed a new way to measure how far home runs were going outside of the stadium. They actually got an Illinois Tech I-Pro team together, and they were able to develop this system for this professional sports team that they still use to this day. A lot of people that graduate with a STEM degree after four years are also going to want to pursue a master's. In some cases, that's necessary for you to actually do the job. Now that could take you up to six years, but IIT has a way to do it a little bit faster. One thing that we do offer at Illinois Tech is an accelerated master's where students can finish their master's degree in one year as opposed to two years. Illinois Tech actually has a list of these co-terminal degree programs that allow you to do your master's and your bachelor's in just five years. So it all sounds pretty great, but what kind of student does IIT want? Five words that really describe what we're looking for in a student, specifically our innovative, passionate, geeky, collaborative, and hands-on. We love to see students that are comfortable in a multicultural setting. Besides that, when students do apply to us, generally we like to see A's and B's in major specific classes, specifically looking at the math classes. The equivalent of pre-calculus is what we like to see. Other good news is that we are test optional for spring 2022 and fall 2022 in terms of SAT and ACT scores. So you are not required to submit SAT or ACT scores. Tuition for IIT is just under $50,000 a year, which might sound a little expensive, but they provide a lot of financial aid. In fact, it's possible for your tuition to be cut in half, but get this, there's even a full tuition scholarship at IIT. I'm very excited to announce that we do have a very, very competitive full tuition scholarship that international students may apply to now. It's called the Leadership Academy. It's on our website. The deadline to apply for it is November 15th. I think last year there were 10 spots available, but they only gave it out to four people. So it is very, very competitive. If you wanna have the best shot at scoring this awesome scholarship, you need to start your preparation now. Now, if you do get in, you're gonna be staying in one very cool campus. So in terms of housing at Illinois Tech, all students are required to live their first two years on campus, but we do have on-campus housing right on campus. We have a very, very small campus, so you can wake up 10, 15 minutes before your class and get there on time. Not that I'd recommend that. It was actually voted one of the coolest storms in America. In terms of public safety, our campus is patrolled 24-7 by public safety officers. Generally, Chicago is very, very safe, especially with public safety on our campus. If you're like me, you had not heard much about IIT before this video. I had never really investigated it very much, but the more I talk to Tyler, the more I realized how much IIT has to offer and why it's so important to look beyond the rankings when you're looking for a university. It's about the perfect fit, exactly. Yeah, you're looking for the perfect fit, not the best-ranked school, because the best-ranked school may not be the best-ranked school for you. Couldn't have said it better myself. Well, thank you everyone for watching this interview about Illinois Tech, just as a reminder that our priority deadlines will apply for fall 2022 and spring 2022 is November 15th, 2021. So do make sure you get your application in by that point. Thanks, everyone. And thank you, Tyler. If you're interested in learning more about IIT, you can head over to their website. There's a link in the description of this video, and you should also go to their YouTube channel and subscribe, because they have a lot of good content about the university, as well as a lot of interviews with students and faculty that can help you get to know IIT if it's a school you might be interested in applying to. If you need help with your application for this year, go to prepwithscore.com or hit us up on Instagram at prepwithscore. We're working on another university episode already, so make sure you subscribe to the channel, and I will see you next week.