Is the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign more selective than the University of Michigan?

The biggest practical tradeoff is that Michigan is typically harder to get into overall, while UIUC can be just as tough or even tougher in certain high-demand majors like engineering or computer science. Broadly speaking, the University of Michigan is viewed as the more selective school at the university-wide level. UIUC is still very selective in many programs, but its admissions difficulty is more uneven across majors and colleges.

That distinction matters because Michigan admits many students to the university or to broader divisions, whereas UIUC is especially known for major-specific admission in some areas. So if you are comparing the schools in the abstract, without tying it to a specific program, Michigan is the tougher admit in most cases. If you are comparing something like CS, engineering, or business-related pathways, UIUC can be extremely competitive and should not be treated as the easier option.

For building a college list, the cleanest way to think about it is this: Michigan is usually the more selective overall institution, while UIUC has selectivity that can swing a lot depending on what you apply for. That means a student applying to a less impacted UIUC major may see a different level of difficulty than a student applying to one of its flagship STEM programs.

So the direct answer is yes: in overall admissions terms, the University of Michigan is generally more selective than UIUC. Just be careful not to flatten program differences, because for some specific majors, UIUC can be every bit as hard to enter.