Hey PP up thread arguing about chemistry, etc, the OP’s kid picked UNC. It’s over. you can stop the rambling posts now.


And it’s a great day to be a Tar Heel!

I suspect UNC has quite a few more chemistry majors than UVA, which may explain it in part. But overall UVA has 56% of classes under 20 students vs 39% at UNC.

UNC may have more chemistry majors due to self-selection, but not 10 times as many.

The "% of classes under a certain #" is a flawed metric because it's not clear if include discussion section and labs, which are led by graduate assistants, not professors.

I suspect UNC has quite a few more chemistry majors than UVA, which may explain it in part. But overall UVA has 56% of classes under 20 students vs 39% at UNC.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP linked to an archived 2017 UvA handbook? We got a link from another student to a simple view of course options. Their numbering system goes up into the 9000s? Not really sure how to read it, but the intro chem courses are limited to 99 labs limited to 24.

https://louslist.org/page.php?Semester=1208&Type=Group&Group=Chemistry

The link I posted is the UVA undergraduate chemistry courses page. It only goes from 1000-4000 level there.
http://records.ureg.virginia.edu/preview_program.php?catoid=43&poid=5218

UVA person here. It says 2017-2018 and ARCHIVED on top of that page.

Lou’s List is current. He’s a physics professor who didn’t like that you had to log into the registration system to see course options and how many seats were taken/allowed in a class, so he built that website for anyone to access. Everyone uses it because it’s so incredibly simple.

Note sure if you realize this, but in the "Lou's List" posted, any class from 5000-9000 level are graduate level classes.
Undergraduate classes are numbered 1000-4000

This is the same in UNC except undergrads are 100-400 level and graduate courses are 500-900.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP linked to an archived 2017 UvA handbook? We got a link from another student to a simple view of course options. Their numbering system goes up into the 9000s? Not really sure how to read it, but the intro chem courses are limited to 99 labs limited to 24.

https://louslist.org/page.php?Semester=1208&Type=Group&Group=Chemistry

The link I posted is the UVA undergraduate chemistry courses page. It only goes from 1000-4000 level there.
http://records.ureg.virginia.edu/preview_program.php?catoid=43&poid=5218

UVA person here. It says 2017-2018 and ARCHIVED on top of that page.

Lou’s List is current. He’s a physics professor who didn’t like that you had to log into the registration system to see course options and how many seats were taken/allowed in a class, so he built that website for anyone to access. Everyone uses it because it’s so incredibly simple.

Obviously between the two schools I would pick whichever is the in-state. No question about that.

Now if both are OOS, these factors should be in the consideration:

1. UVA is more like a private school. As matter of fact UVA was considering at one point fully becoming a private school. With that kind of school vibe in mind, you get the idea that it will be more like Brown, Dartmouth type. Very different from some other state schools at the extreme, like UIUC, Purdue, Michigan, etc, which are huge but research strong, less emphasizing on undergraduates. UNC is somewhere in the middle between UVA and those large state schools. UVA has an enrollment of 16,777 and UNC 19,117, according to usnews. Both are in preferred size compared to the other humongous state schools.

2. Endowment rather than state funding. UVA depends on state funding much less than UNC. You know how state budget fighting works every year. It creates a lot of uncertainty in university funding. You may have a nice senior research program this year and suddenly next year it may be in limbo.

3. A brutally research heavy school can bring opportunities to undergrads and can bring apathy toward undergrads as well. The research heavy state schools typically have many young research faculties in the middle of establishing themselves in their careers. Their first concern is their own research output (that's why the schools are very active in research), and they have their eyes much more on their research assistants (graduate students) than undergrad teaching. There is just that tendency that many f these faculty members teach bad courses as their minds are not on the minimumly required undergrad teaching responsibilities, if any. So you may really want to reconsider if too much a research heavy is a good thing for you.

4. Ratio of out state students vs in state. This is why typically private schools are better than state schools in this regard. An overwhelming number of in state students spells less competency in student selection for the school.

Anonymous wrote:PP linked to an archived 2017 UvA handbook? We got a link from another student to a simple view of course options. Their numbering system goes up into the 9000s? Not really sure how to read it, but the intro chem courses are limited to 99 labs limited to 24.

https://louslist.org/page.php?Semester=1208&Type=Group&Group=Chemistry

The link I posted is the UVA undergraduate chemistry courses page. It only goes from 1000-4000 level there.
http://records.ureg.virginia.edu/preview_program.php?catoid=43&poid=5218

PP linked to an archived 2017 UvA handbook? We got a link from another student to a simple view of course options. Their numbering system goes up into the 9000s? Not really sure how to read it, but the intro chem courses are limited to 99 labs limited to 24.

https://louslist.org/page.php?Semester=1208&Type=Group&Group=Chemistry

We just sat in on a student zoom for UVA. The first student was premed and said his largest class was 300, but he had a class of 6 at the same time. It really seems like class sizes depend on popularity of class and level. He recommended a certain kind of freshman-only class for getting to know your advisor better. Can’t remember the name if it at the moment.

Another girl talked about her professor having tea and cookies at office hours. When the admissions person said that probably wasn’t normal, the girl said most professors offer visitors coffee during office hours.

OP has said the decision is made and the student is going to UNC, but I’m sure similar opportunities for large and small classes exist there. Good luck to your DC, OP!

Larger universities have larger budgets and do more research- sure. What does it mean then, when a large university like UVA doesn't do more research?

It means fewer total professors, fewer accomplished professors, fewer variety courses offered and decrepit departments, less rigorous courses. And this includes fewer and worse graduate courses which top undergrads generally take.

Again, you keep trying to argue as if UVA is a liberal arts college and the professors there will somehow be able to provide amazing one-on-one counseling to the students there. Sorry, that's simply not the reality. The early introductory courses will be 100+ student lecture halls, and the later upper-level courses will be 50+ student lectures because they don't have enough professors to teach all the upper-level courses in a given major.

What will provide more resources, possibly, is UVA's large endowment. But not the distinction between UNC being research-focused and UVA being "undergraduate-focused". Again, a 16,800 sized state university can be 'undergraduate-focused' but that does not mean its anywhere close to LAC's in that undergraduate focus or any different than a 18000 research university like UNC.


Look at the courses offered for Chemistry at UNC vs. UVA:
https://catalog.unc.edu/courses/chem/
http://records.ureg.virginia.edu/preview_program.php?catoid=43&poid=5218

UNC has ~58 individual (meaning no lab, 'honors' version, or independent research) courses offered for 100-400 level. Undergraduates can take grad level courses as well, of which they have ~20+ including seminars.

UVA has ~15 offered at the 100-400 level. And you can bet they won't have as many offered at the graduate level.

UVA offers 4 400-level Chem courses. 4. This is when the undergrads are specializing into an area, and they provide 4 courses.
UNC offers 41 400-level Chem courses.

The courses at UVA are generic requirements while the ones at UNC include both standard generic courses and specialized courses based on a professor's research.

Furthermore, you can also bet that at the 400-level, UVA won't be teaching all the offered courses in the same semester i.e. out of 8 400-level courses in a given major, they might only teach 5 of them on a given semester due to lack of professors. UNC can teach far more variety of courses out of the 41 provided i.e. 20, because they have more professors.

This is not including the 'Special Topics' courses (which is counted as 1) of which there might be multiple different courses offered, most likely more at UNC than UVA.

So again, parents look at USNews rankings to get a idea of the quality of a school as a undergrad institution. 27 vs. 29 essentially equal regardless. But why is it that two universities virtually equal in size and USNews undergraduate ranking provide such a vast difference in academic programs? The research that an institution engages in filters down to undergraduate students in a significant manner.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:External research grants can be used to fund professors. These professors then may be paid a small portion of their salary from the university while a large percent of their salary comes from the grant. Furthermore a portion of research money is dedicated to university functions i.e. building expenses, etc.

Meanwhile, universities with less research may have to pay the entirety of the professor's salary with university funds.

Research grants are typically restricted to purpose. Tuition is unrestricted. From a Council on Government Relations report authored by university aministrators:

"Sources of revenue for both public and private research universities can be divided into
unrestricted and restricted resources. Unrestricted resources can be used at the discretion
of the institution for the primary missions of teaching, research, public service, or any
other activity. The primary unrestricted sources for operations are state appropriations
(public) and tuition (both public and private). Restricted resources are those that are
limited in use by third parties, such as donors and research sponsors. Restrictions are
typically related to the use of the resources for a particular organizational unit (e.g., the
physics department), to a particular purpose (e.g., music scholarships), or to a specific
activity (e.g., NIH-funded cancer research). "

"Revenue that supports a federally sponsored research program is required by the sponsor to have a one-to-one relationship
with the expenditures for that program. On the other hand, revenue sources that are
unrestricted, such as state appropriations and tuition, support a wide range of institutional
activities, including teaching, student services, and administration; the one-to-one
revenue-expenditure relationship does not exist. Instead, a single, limited pool of
unrestricted revenue is expended according to the competing needs and priorities of the
university."

Authors include: James Luther, Committee Chairman Cynthia Hope
Duke University University of Alabama
James Barbret Terry Johnson
Wayne State University University of Iowa
Sara Bible Ron Maples
Stanford University University of Tennessee System
Mary Lee Brown Kim Moreland
University of Pennsylvania University of Wisconsin
Michael Daniels Ryan Rapp (Volunteer)
Northwestern University University of Missouri System
Kelvin Droegemeier John Shipley
University of Oklahoma University of Miami
Dan Evon Cathy Snyder
Michigan State University Vanderbilt University
Jill Ferguson (Volunteer and Editor) Eric Vermillion (Retired)
University of Missouri, Columbia University of California,
San Francisco

About 30% of research budget comes from institutional funding on average, since the grants don't cover all costs. A significant part of that likely comes from unrestricted funds (tuition, state appropriations). So again I dispute your claim that more research is necessarily better from an undergraduate education point of view.

https://www.cogr.edu/COGR/files/ccLibraryFiles/Filename/000000000267/Finances%20of%20Research%20Universities_June%202014.pdf

Simply untrue.

1. Federal funds may be required for research - which note that it includes research assistantships, facilities and supplies, etc. which would other wise come from the university's purse - but top researchers that are normally contracted to teach 3 classes a semester, for example, can set aside a portion of the research money they have won and give it to the university to "buy" their way out of teaching the 3rd class. In turn, the university then uses that money to hire another professor. In this manner, large research universities can maintain a huge number of faculty, each that may only teach 1 grad and 1 undergrad course a semester. This provides variety in the number of professors and the number of courses offered at the research university. A non-research university therefore generally has a smaller faculty in the various departments

2. Furthermore, research universities don't only get funding from the federal government, but also from industry and other organizations. These industry research funds can be used to heavily supplement the income of the professors researching on the project that the funding has been granted for. For example, a research university might pay maximum base salary of $250,000 for professors. However, if that professor's lab or research group then wins funding from industry, it can supplement the professor's income massively i.e. to $500,000 for the year. Essentially, the research university can attract professors that are way out of the university's budget - i.e. if they are a state university especially - because the professor's affiliation with the research university (and the facilities that the university provides) allows the professor to win huge research funds from industry/organizations. This way, a research university can attract far more 'expensive' professors to work at the university who would other wise not come due to the lower pay. Meanwhile a non-research university would have to flat out pay the $500,000/yr salary in order to attract the same caliber of professors to work there. Why do you think universities like Berkeley, UCLA, Michigan, Purdue, Georgia Tech, UIUC, etc. can be the top of the field in research and compete with the Ivies, despite being state universities with comparably small endowments? How can they attract professors who could be enticed by Ivy-level salaries? External industry research funding, which heavily skews towards medical, natural sciences and engineering.

You are just describing how the university can get larger, have a larger overall budget, and and have more people doing research. That isn't in dispute. But universities typically have to come up with significant institutional funds to cover unfunded costs. The average across all types is about 30% of the total cost. At a school like MIT, it is usually lower because they aren't asked to make up as much of a gap. At a school like Virginia Tech, it will be considerably higher (over 40%). A significant amount of that funding is going to come from unrestricted funds -- tuition and state appropriations. These funds go to research, not instruction as many assume. It is a subsidization. See article below from former Provost at USC (Provost is in charge of research program).

https://www.changinghighereducation.com/2016/08/the-high-cost-of-funded-research.html