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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It is interesting to see the impressions that people get.  Having been at Hopkins, Harvard and several other places (either as a student, researcher, faculty or more than 1-day visitor for work) and from a little bit of feedback from colleagues, here is my categorization:

Total ignorance of undergrads:
Caltech
Harvard (to some degree)
UCSB

Much but not total ignorance:
Berkeley
U Chicago
JHU
Yale
University of Washington

Attention paid
MIT
Princeton
Penn

At the center:
Harvey Mudd
Reed / other SLACs

Just my two cents, not at all scientific.[/quote]

I'm guessing from your list that you're in a STEM field.  I'm in the humanities but have had similar types of exposure to a bunch of the same schools.  FWIW, my experiences/impressions are pretty closely aligned with yours.  Harvard might be the exception -- I'd move it to "much but not total ignorance" and suspect that the difference in our perceptions is field-related.

What prompted your "to some extent" qualifier in that case?  Depends on field? individual professor? individual undergrad?  (I ask because I think my kid's going to end up a scientist and I wonder whether Harvard's a place where quality/intensity of grad students limits lab/mentorship opportunities available for undergrads.)[/quote]

Yes, STEM field (which probably makes sense given that I listed MIT + Caltech).  Anyhow, interesting that humanities for the most part align.

My sense at Harvard is that teaching is not a priority for faculty and I haven't heard ever of any teaching initiatives that originated at Harvard (as opposed to Princeton, for example).  Not sure why it's not with Caltech + UCSB except that I think they have enough money that they can sometimes create original programs that many other places can't).  It also depends on the major.

Oh, I forgot stanford -- it would be in the "much but not total ignorance section."

With regards to research, you want to look at that different from how much profs care about teaching undergrads in the classroom.   When you go to a school you want to ask what percentage of STEM students do research, whether they publish papers and do so in the summer.  MIT + Caltech + Hopkins  + UW do great with undergrad research.   So does Harvey Mudd Princeton has an undergrad thesis program that gets students involved.  Harvard, UCSB, Yale and some others I am less sure of.  But the thing to be clear on is that the "culture" of the classroom and of research are different.  And having good grad students would actually be good for undergrad research -- my grad students are the primary supervisors of the undergrads since I couldn't possibly supervise the 10 or more undergrads currently working in my group with any regularity.  I meet with these students once every couple months but the grad students make sure they know what they are doing in the lab.

Also, at some schools doing research in different areas is harder or easier than others.  If your kid is interested in medicine, research at MIT or UCSB will be different because there is no med school, than a place where students work at the med school like Penn (whose med school is right on campus).    Another question is what to do over the summer.  MIT has a fabulous summer research program.  Others have nothing and resulting ad hoc approaches if summer research is a goal.[/quote]great info from both PPs! If you could were advising a 17 yo who is STEM oriented but not necessarily headed for an academic/research career, which of these undergrads would you recommend for strongest undergraduate teaching?[/quote]

Same PP again.  I know that you think you are paying $50k/year for teaching but you are not.  There is a reason that Harvard or MIT are still the top in their fields without being tops at teaching.  Students learn by interacting with other students and get jobs by forming a strong network with leaders in the areas they decide to pursue.  Good teaching is good but good curriculum and program is also important. As are good fellow students: I learned as much from my peers (doing homework or just talking or doing crazy projects or hearing about their research) in college as I did in class.

All that said, if it is teaching alone, Olin College in Boston is awesome and by far the best for STEM education. Harvey Mudd also is amazing.  Princeton is solid enough, although its reputation for teaching is more for the humanities to be honest unless you are a math or physics genius who *is* interested in an academic career.  MIT has good teaching in some fields, less in others, but if teaching is a major concern, you shouldn't be looking at a school as big as MIT.  Berkeley or UCSB (along with many state schools,) are going to be toward the bottom since classes are big and labs are hard to organize: for teaching, better student: faculty ratio is important.   SLACs are going to be stronger at teaching because their faculty go there to teach and get rewarded for good teaching.  Universities are going to have their share of brilliant researchers who are not great teachers.

But again, you really want to go beyond teaching when considering a school and look at all the ways a school offers for the student to become the person they would like to be.  Teaching is only one dimension.

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