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[quote=Anonymous][quote]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 went to Reed and then went to graduate school at a large, well respected flagship research university.  I have also spent significant amounts of time on other college campuses.  My experience--which seems to be the same as what my peers experienced--is that any place that has top notch graduate programs is not going to be very undergraduate oriented/have undergraduate teaching be a huge priority.  If you want that, go to a SLAC like Harvey Mudd, Reed, Swarthmore, Amherst, Middlebury, Williams, etc.  Places like Texas, Berkeley, Michigan, Harvard, Yale, Chicago etc. don't have undergraduate teaching as a top priority--for many it is a chore.  For the professors it is something they have to do, for the grad students it's something they do to get paid, but their real work is on their dissertation.  This is not to say that you can't get a great education at someplace where undergrads are not the priority, and research is prioritized.  For one, if you are an extremely motivated undergrad, you can get involved in some pretty top notch research/have access to great scholars.  Also at places like Harvard, Stanford, and MIT, even if undergraduate teaching isn't the priority, the peer effect is pretty great--you're around really really smart people so the classes can be taught to a very high level.  But if you want classes that are really focused on pedagogy and critical thinking, attention from professors, ample opportunities to pursue undergraduate research (rather than just striking lucky or the possibility of doing some grunt work or dishwashing for a grad student), classes that are organized in a way to teach you rather than to grade easily so it doesn't eat away too much time from research, etc. then go someplace where there is no graduate program.[/quote]

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