Anonymous wrote:Brandeis is another (smaller) private R1 in NE that’s a good option for STEM students who want a well-rounded college education. A friend who administers grants for NSF raved about the undergrad STEM training/research opportunities there.

I have heard it is very intense

Brandeis is another (smaller) private R1 in NE that’s a good option for STEM students who want a well-rounded college education. A friend who administers grants for NSF raved about the undergrad STEM training/research opportunities there.

"Here is the thing at a big research university (Michigan, Penn State, etc): You will not know the research professors. You might get to know the grad students; they will be the ones who you interact with."

While this is a reasonable general statement, you have to judge each case for it's own merits.

In my experience with big research universities, there is a wide variety of undergraduate doing research.

At my undergraduate institution, that just made the cut for R1, my undergraduate advisor worked with every BS student. At his retirement party he told me that despite every undergraduate needing to write a 50 or so page "thesis" only two of his 50+ undergraduates published their work.

At my graduate school, that was a medium sized R1, all BS students needed to write a thesis. Some of these students were published twice and ended up at Harvard level grad schools and others scraped together 20 pages and got jobs teaching HS chemistry at private schools. Likewise, some of them worked with only grad students and some worked with National Academy members. I would say about 1/3 of both groups published once but almost always as first authors.

At the competitive R1 I am affiliated with now, again, every BS student has to write something like a thesis (some write capstone papers from more than one lab). Unlike the old days when only the best students started working in the lab before their senior year, now most everyone starts in the lab as freshmen. While they have lots more experiments done by the time they graduate, I think the 1/3 publishing rate is about correct. I guess there are more that are middle authors but often those papers don't come out until long after they are in grad school.

Carnegie Mellon and Tufts would also be worth a look.

In the Midwest, UChicago, WashU, and Case Western Reserve.

Anonymous wrote:Harvard, Princeton, and Hopkins. So no hidden gems there, I’m afraid!

Rats!!

Rice! Don’t limit your search to the Northeast.

Harvard, Princeton, and Hopkins. So no hidden gems there, I’m afraid!

Anonymous wrote:For me, private R1s with undergrad populations of around 6K really hit the sweet spot wrt mentorship, cutting edge work/facilities, and broad-based education combined with advanced work (and breadth/depth of faculty and courses) in the major. Though I also see the allure of the great public R1s.

Can you name some of your favorites in the North east?

For me, private R1s with undergrad populations of around 6K really hit the sweet spot wrt mentorship, cutting edge work/facilities, and broad-based education combined with advanced work (and breadth/depth of faculty and courses) in the major. Though I also see the allure of the great public R1s.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am the PP who commented on writing. Here is the thing at a big research university (Michigan, Penn State, etc): You will not know the research professors. You might get to know the grad students; they will be the ones who you interact with.

the undergrad population will not benefit from the fancy labs; at best, they will get a tour, but faculty are not going to risk the expensive equipment on undergrads.

So, you are taught by grad students more than faculty, the faculty view teaching as an annoyance that keeps them away from their research.

At the LAC, you will have the graduate of the major research universities (PhD's), but they are paid to teach. And they are the ones that teach the class. The people that assist them in research are often undergrads.

You seem confused about teaching labs vs. research labs. The quality of teaching labs (i.e. labs designed to allow undergrads to do standard, educational experiments) is a function of the school's endowment and annual fundraising. Rich schools, universities or SLACs will have nice ones, less well off schools will have less nice ones. There is some relationship between the quality of education and how nice the teaching labs are, but it's not as direct as you might think.

Research labs (i.e. where faculty conduct their own research) are a different thing. Their quality is a function of the wealth of the school (i.e. what they can provide faculty in lab start up funds) and the prestige of the faculty (i.e. what they can get in research grants). Undergrad students at any school will only benefit from these labs if they seek a research position. But if they do, they will get an opportunity to contribute to scientific research (they will almost assuredly not be doing completely independent research). This type of research experience is typically a pre-requisite to admission to any decent STEM PhD program and increasingly to medical school as well.

At any research university (private, public, etc), I have not heard of advanced STEM courses within the major being taught by graduate students. Usually, only the introductory courses are taught by grad students...and, often, there are separate tracks for majors vs students fulfilling distribution or professional school requirements. The first-year courses for the majors, even at large research universities, are often taught by faculty.

+100

Anonymous wrote:I am the PP who commented on writing. Here is the thing at a big research university (Michigan, Penn State, etc): You will not know the research professors. You might get to know the grad students; they will be the ones who you interact with.

the undergrad population will not benefit from the fancy labs; at best, they will get a tour, but faculty are not going to risk the expensive equipment on undergrads.

So, you are taught by grad students more than faculty, the faculty view teaching as an annoyance that keeps them away from their research.

At the LAC, you will have the graduate of the major research universities (PhD's), but they are paid to teach. And they are the ones that teach the class. The people that assist them in research are often undergrads.

You seem confused about teaching labs vs. research labs. The quality of teaching labs (i.e. labs designed to allow undergrads to do standard, educational experiments) is a function of the school's endowment and annual fundraising. Rich schools, universities or SLACs will have nice ones, less well off schools will have less nice ones. There is some relationship between the quality of education and how nice the teaching labs are, but it's not as direct as you might think.

Research labs (i.e. where faculty conduct their own research) are a different thing. Their quality is a function of the wealth of the school (i.e. what they can provide faculty in lab start up funds) and the prestige of the faculty (i.e. what they can get in research grants). Undergrad students at any school will only benefit from these labs if they seek a research position. But if they do, they will get an opportunity to contribute to scientific research (they will almost assuredly not be doing completely independent research). This type of research experience is typically a pre-requisite to admission to any decent STEM PhD program and increasingly to medical school as well.

At any research university (private, public, etc), I have not heard of advanced STEM courses within the major being taught by graduate students. Usually, only the introductory courses are taught by grad students...and, often, there are separate tracks for majors vs students fulfilling distribution or professional school requirements. The first-year courses for the majors, even at large research universities, are often taught by faculty.

Anonymous wrote:The Bryn Mawr example doesn't seem typical to me. I visited the Pomona science buildings and was not only impressed by how nice they were, but each professor had their own lab staffed with 4-5 undergraduates. We talked to students and they said virtually everyone engaged in summer research thanks to the school's programs (apparently, they fund over 250 students). Two of the students were rising seniors- one was heading to Harvard, also having considered offers at Stanford, Berkeley, and UChicago, while the other was headed to Princeton chemistry. The buildings were filled with posters of past research projects undertaken by students. If Pomona is the example for how other top SLACs are with regards to preparation for a science education, I don't think a highly qualified student would find themselves with any disadvantage going to them over a research university.

Thanks for weighing in. I was trying to find out how typical this would be in a highly regarded SLAC.
So Bryn Mawr has around 30 biology students doing research per year. I am guessing your Pomona number of 250 is for all science students? Another point to consider is that Bryn Mawr has 1300 students and Pomona College has around 1750.

Anonymous wrote:I am the PP who commented on writing. Here is the thing at a big research university (Michigan, Penn State, etc): You will not know the research professors. You might get to know the grad students; they will be the ones who you interact with.

the undergrad population will not benefit from the fancy labs; at best, they will get a tour, but faculty are not going to risk the expensive equipment on undergrads.

So, you are taught by grad students more than faculty, the faculty view teaching as an annoyance that keeps them away from their research.

At the LAC, you will have the graduate of the major research universities (PhD's), but they are paid to teach. And they are the ones that teach the class. The people that assist them in research are often undergrads.

I went to a college that's somewhere in the middle -- Washington University.

All of my classes were taught by a tenure-track professor or a reasonable equivalent (example: famous writers or famous editors). I was scared to death of talking to professors, but they seemed to be pretty easy to talk to.

So, I think this is a case where you have to talk to people who've studied at a university to know what the culture is really like. Professors at some of the midsize research universities might be reasonably approachable.

The Bryn Mawr example doesn't seem typical to me. I visited the Pomona science buildings and was not only impressed by how nice they were, but each professor had their own lab staffed with 4-5 undergraduates. We talked to students and they said virtually everyone engaged in summer research thanks to the school's programs (apparently, they fund over 250 students). Two of the students were rising seniors- one was heading to Harvard, also having considered offers at Stanford, Berkeley, and UChicago, while the other was headed to Princeton chemistry. The buildings were filled with posters of past research projects undertaken by students. If Pomona is the example for how other top SLACs are with regards to preparation for a science education, I don't think a highly qualified student would find themselves with any disadvantage going to them over a research university.

I am the PP who commented on writing. Here is the thing at a big research university (Michigan, Penn State, etc): You will not know the research professors. You might get to know the grad students; they will be the ones who you interact with.

the undergrad population will not benefit from the fancy labs; at best, they will get a tour, but faculty are not going to risk the expensive equipment on undergrads.

So, you are taught by grad students more than faculty, the faculty view teaching as an annoyance that keeps them away from their research.

At the LAC, you will have the graduate of the major research universities (PhD's), but they are paid to teach. And they are the ones that teach the class. The people that assist them in research are often undergrads.