The Old Capitol is seen with the Iowa Homecoming Corn Statue in front on Thursday, October 18, 2018.
In Their Own Words: Why do Illinois students choose Iowa over in-state universities?
Five students from Illinois describe what brought them to the University of Iowa.
A 2017 student profile of all University of Iowa students showed that 6,117 of the UI’s students come from Illinois, the second most populous state after Iowa’s 19,200 in-state students. With out-of-state universities typically becoming more expensive than universities in a student’s state of residence, why do so many Hawkeyes come from Iowa’s neighboring state?
A comparison of the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign and the UI, two public Big Ten schools, shows tuition to be very competitive. In-state students at UIUC are estimated to pay $31,012 to $36,016, whereas out-of-state UI students are estimated to pay around $42,630 to $46,430 before scholarships or aid. In-state Hawkeyes paid roughly $20,664 to $24,464 for the 2018-19 academic year. Besides the programs offered at the UI, cost of tuition was a common answer of students surveyed for this article.
