The Illinois app has become must-have equipment on the Urbana-Champaign campus.
Just like students carry backpacks, laptops, notebooks, and phones throughout a semester, they have the Illinois app with them to manage the identity verification, navigation, dining, and academic tasks they perform most days of the week.
The app is also in demand with others on campus. Tens of thousands of employees, prospective students, parents, and other visitors access features to help them locate dining spots, identify events of interest, and get directions.
39,000+
Total unique authenticated student users
Fall 2025
Usage Rates
High usage cuts across colleges. Some units have a nearly perfect 100% rate according to fall 2025 enrollment numbers. The newly established Division of Exploratory Studies for first-year students and sophomores ranks first at 98%, and the College of Applied Health Sciences is close behind at 95%. Also notable are the College of Agricultural, Consumer, and Environmental Sciences—with its globally ranked agricultural programs—at 75% and the College of Fine and Applied Arts at 72%.
Students in larger colleges also frequently access the app. Nearly 68% of the 16,246 enrollees in The Grainger College of Engineering have used the app. And in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, which has the second highest enrollment at 15,678, a full 77% of students were app users.
Class Standing
The Illinois app is clearly popular with all undergraduates. It is one of the most common tools among students: the vast majority signed in to the app in fall 2025. Nearly 75% of seniors have used it, and juniors are even more engaged: almost 88% have accessed it. Sophomores are also a key audience with a whopping 95% usage rate. And almost 100% of first-year students have signed in.
That’s roughly 87% of fall 2025 enrolled undergraduates.
Top 5 Features
- Wallet
- Map
- Dining
- Academics
- Appointments
Fall 2025
Impact
Class-to-Class Navigation at Scale
At the beginning of a semester, students can readily get directions to their next class through the My Courses option on the Map feature. On the first day of class in fall 2025, this course-linked navigation service handled nearly 490,000 requests. Over the first month of that semester, requests ballooned into the millions—with predictable spikes about eight minutes before each hour, exactly when students leave one class and head to the next. On a campus with 300+ buildings, this is a quiet but profound service: it helps students arrive on time, reduces avoidable stress, and smooths the critical first weeks of the term.
Dining Safely
Decisions about what and where to eat are made multiple times a day, and for those managing dietary needs, these choices can have high stakes. The Dining feature combined with the My Food Filter allow users to select cuisine types or exclude ingredients to customize the menu items they see. This centralized, accurate, and timely source of information on food served in residence hall dining spots supports well-being, reduces uncertainty, and contributes meaningfully to safe decision-making.
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