Quad
Trends by state

Trends by state

Illinois

69 colleges on the site: 12 public, 56 private nonprofit, 1 for-profit. Their undergraduates fell 9% in total since fall 2014, to 252,935 today (53 of 69 Illinois colleges in the panel).

Explore Illinois's colleges

How Illinois's colleges changed

The median Illinois college, fall 2014 to fall 2024, against the national median (dashed) over the same .

Undergraduates

-16%

over 10 years, median college

  • This state
  • National median

Applicants

+41%

over 10 years, median college

  • This state
  • National median

Acceptance rate

+10.5 pts

over 10 years, median college

  • This state
  • National median

Average total cost

-17%

over 10 years, median college

  • This state
  • National median

Public and private

State stories are often public-system stories: a state's publics shrinking while its privates hold, or the reverse.

Public

12 colleges
Undergrads
-27%
Applicants
+54%
Acceptance rate
+11.9 pts
Average cost
-22%

Private nonprofit

40 colleges
Undergrads
-12%
Applicants
+39%
Acceptance rate
+9.2 pts
Average cost
-15%

Where Illinois's first-years come from

Top sending states

  1. Illinois (in-state)76%
  2. CA3%
  3. MO2%
  4. TX2%
  5. IN1%
  6. WI1%
  7. NY1%
  8. MI1%

Public:

6% → 8% (12 colleges)

Private nonprofit:

25% → 25% (56 colleges)

First-years crossing state lines, fall 2024

Inflow
10,941
Outflow
30,289
Net
-19,348

Illinois's colleges enroll 0.4 first-years from other states for every Illinois resident who starts college in another state, among four-year colleges on this site.

Colleges taking the most of the inflow

  1. Northwestern University13%
  2. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign11%
  3. Loyola University Chicago11%
  4. University of Chicago11%
  5. DePaul University7%

One fall, over campus-based colleges only: not that fall, not for-profit, and not a campus that merged or split.

Biggest movers in Illinois

The same as the national lists, restricted to Illinois's colleges.

Applications surged

, fall 2014 to fall 2024

Median college: +40.8% (38 colleges ranked)

  1. 1Illinois Institute of Technology+243.2%3,559 → 12,216
  2. 2Illinois Wesleyan University+178.9%3,427 → 9,558
  3. 3Aurora University+131.8%2,323 → 5,384
  4. 4University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign+105.9%35,822 → 73,742
  5. 5Elmhurst University+95.6%3,193 → 6,245
  6. 6Chicago State University+92.8%5,517 → 10,638
  7. 7Loyola University Chicago+92.6%20,414 → 39,315
  8. 8Dominican University+86.2%3,692 → 6,873
  9. 9School of the Art Institute of Chicago+77.3%3,737 → 6,626
  10. 10University of Illinois Chicago+74.1%15,560 → 27,085

Sources:IPEDS Admissions survey, Fall 2014 to Fall 2024;College Scorecard (enrollment), Fall 2014 to Fall 2024;IPEDS Fall Enrollment survey (distance education), Fall 2014 to Fall 2024About the data(built 2026-10-12; CPI retrieved 2026-10-12)

Top 10 and how it's ranked

Grew the most

, fall 2014 to fall 2024

Median college: −16.3% (46 colleges ranked)

  1. 1University of Illinois Chicago+33.3%16,635 → 22,170
  2. 2University of Chicago+32.1%5,729 → 7,569
  3. 3Aurora University+24.2%3,199 → 3,974
  4. 4Dominican University+19.2%2,149 → 2,561
  5. 5Loyola University Chicago+16.9%10,042 → 11,737
  6. 6University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign+13.8%31,875 → 36,258
  7. 7Lake Forest College+13.3%1,600 → 1,813
  8. 8Elmhurst University+8.4%2,773 → 3,006
  9. 9Illinois State University+5.5%18,056 → 19,057
  10. 10Northwestern University+5.5%8,725 → 9,201

Sources:College Scorecard (enrollment), Fall 2014 to Fall 2024;IPEDS Fall Enrollment survey (distance education), Fall 2014 to Fall 2024About the data(built 2026-10-12; CPI retrieved 2026-10-12)

Top 10 and how it's ranked

Students pay much less

(in 2023–24 dollars), 2013–14 to 2023–24

Median college: −18.1% (43 colleges ranked)

  1. 1Northern Illinois University−41.1%$26,365 → $15,527
  2. 2Eastern Illinois University−39.5%$25,402 → $15,379
  3. 3Governors State University−34.8%$26,874 (2014–15) → $17,533
  4. 4Southern Illinois University-Carbondale−32.1%$24,163 → $16,419
  5. 5Bradley University−31.1%$36,560 → $25,199
  6. 6Chicago State University−29.4%$19,324 → $13,636
  7. 7Saint Xavier University−28.5%$29,193 → $20,863
  8. 8Columbia College Chicago−25.5%$42,450 → $31,609
  9. 9University of St Francis−24.4%$27,490 → $20,782
  10. 10Augustana College−23.9%$33,665 → $25,606

Sources:IPEDS Institutional Characteristics survey, 2013–14 to 2023–24;IPEDS Student Financial Aid survey, 2013–14 to 2023–24;College Scorecard (enrollment), Fall 2013 to Fall 2024;inflation: BLS CPI-U, school-year averagesAbout the data(built 2026-10-12; CPI retrieved 2026-10-12)

Top 10 and how it's ranked

Public research universities

Illinois's public R1 and R2 universities (Carnegie 2025), with their undergraduate change over the same window. No classification in the data means "flagship," so this is simply the state's public research universities.

How this was measured

  • Which colleges. Colleges with 300 or more undergraduates in both fall 2014 and fall 2024: 53 of 69 Illinois colleges. It's a , so colleges entering or leaving the data don't look like change.
  • Average total cost is an academic-year figure, one year behind fall: 2013–14 to 2023–24, after inflation.
  • Out-of-state shares are collected in even-numbered falls only; odd years are gaps, not zeros.
  • Totals and medians both appear because they can diverge: a state's total can fall more (or less) than its median college when its biggest colleges move differently.
  • No policy attribution. This page shows what changed, not why; a state's mix of public, private, and for-profit colleges, and its system policies, aren't broken out as causes.
  • First-years crossing state lines is a single snapshot, fall 2024, over campus-based colleges only: colleges that fall, for-profit colleges, and campuses that merged or split are left out. It's the newest fall the site's per-college home-state tables cover, not this page's ten-year window.

Sources:College Scorecard (enrollment), Fall 2014 to Fall 2024;IPEDS Admissions survey, Fall 2014 to Fall 2024;IPEDS Institutional Characteristics survey, 2014–15 to 2023–24;IPEDS Student Financial Aid survey, 2014–15 to 2023–24;IPEDS Fall Enrollment survey (part C, residence of first-time students), Fall 2014 to Fall 2024;inflation: BLS CPI-U, school-year averagesAbout the data(built 2026-10-12; CPI retrieved 2026-10-12)