University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign vs. Notre Dame: which has better return on investment for a STEM major?

For a STEM major, UIUC often has the better return on investment, especially if you are in-state or paying anything close to public-school pricing. Its engineering, computer science, and other technical fields have a very strong recruiting pipeline, and many graduates land in high-paying industries without taking on private-school levels of debt. Notre Dame can still be an excellent financial outcome, but the math is usually harder to justify unless your aid package brings the cost much closer.

The biggest differentiator is price relative to career outcomes. UIUC is one of the most established public universities for engineering and computing, with deep employer connections in tech, manufacturing, research, and quantitative fields. For many STEM students, the salary upside is already strong enough there that paying substantially more for Notre Dame does not necessarily buy a meaningfully better earnings trajectory.

Another factor is program-specific reputation. In several STEM areas, especially engineering and computer science, UIUC has unusually strong national credibility and employer familiarity. That matters for internships, campus recruiting, and first-job placement, which are some of the clearest drivers of ROI early in a career.

Notre Dame’s advantage is that its alumni network is famously engaged and can be especially helpful in business, consulting, finance, and cross-disciplinary career paths. If your STEM interests lean toward combining technical work with leadership, startups, product roles, or eventually an MBA-style path, Notre Dame can create valuable opportunities. But from a pure dollars-and-cents perspective for a traditional STEM route, UIUC tends to come out ahead unless Notre Dame offers exceptional financial aid.