Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="nakia" data-source="post: 2319446" data-attributes="member: 25747">I've never been to Urbana-Champaign, but know a number of people in graduate school at Illinois.  I lived in Texas for a few years and visited Austin frequently.Go to Austin.Illinois is a good school, but no one I know speaks very highly of U-C as a town.  It's not horrible, from what I hear, just not all that interesting.Austin, on the other hand, is a fun place.  It has a GREAT music scene that spans many genres.  Plenty of blues, country, folk, indie rock, and punk.  They also have a great film scene as well.  Robert Rodriguez (Sin City, Spy Kids, Desperado) has his Troublemaker Studios there.  Richard Linklater (Dazed and Confused, Before Sunrise) works from Austin.  They have a giant music/film/art convention every year -- South by Southwest.  There are tons of music venues and several good indie recond shops.  I have also heard there are some good FLGS's there as well, though I never visited any while in town.  I went to the rival Texas university (Texas A&M), so I don't know a whole lot about campus life at UT.  But it tends to draw a more liberal student body (for Texas, at least).  The fraternity/sorority scene is pretty big.  (American) football is HUGE.  But it's a big, big school, so there are bound to be plenty of people that are into all sorts of different things.Austin grew really quickly during the tech boom of the 1990's, which led to some sprawl, bad traffic, and some loss of character and wierdness.  Austin is also a cool city that knows it's cool, which can be annoying sometimes.  Those are my only real complaints.From my limited experience, Austin would win hands down.  Texas would certainly be a unique American experience for a non-American.Good luck!</blockquote>

Verification