I believe Georgia Tech is slightly better as a Engineering school, and GaTech definitely has more industrial connections than UIUC, I'm also working in control theory and application, researches in ECE@UIUC are more theoretical, while GT professors have more funding from industry, if I were u, I'll choose GT without a doubt.
Agree with TKassis, Georgia Tech is a big name in Engineering (I believe GT ranked 4th in US below MIT,Stanford and Berkeley), and CMU maybe better in Computer Science and Business, but definitely not Engineering.
BTW, Aerospace Engineering at Georgia Tech is extremely strong, ranked top 3 in US, many graduates get hired by Lockheed Martin, Boeing, etc.