<p>^
Didn't know that. I guess my statement earlier was too presumptuous.</p>
<p>Somebody help me out!!!</p>
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It does not even claim to be undergraduate-focused.
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<p>No, but rather it emphasizes that it is able to offer a top undergrad and a top grad. I would say it is one of the few universities that can juggle a supreme undergrad and grad.</p>
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Stanford is overwhelmingly propelled by those "top law and business school" that you just mentioned.
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<p>I highly disagree. The professional schools really do their own thing on campus. Just because Princeton doesn’t have them doesn’t mean that other schools should be faulted for having them. ;)</p>
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I highly doubt that law school professors will teach undergrads.
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<p>As was said, a law school professor (a well-known one, too) does teach an IHUM course, which is a very basic required course for freshmen.</p>
<p>Helen</a> Stacy | Stanford Law School</p>
<p>This isn’t uncommon, either. Ever heard of Tobias Wolff? You may have read some of his works in English class (or seen This Boy’s Life). He too teaches an IHUM course.</p>
<p>Tobias</a> Wolff - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia </p>
<p>Students are paired with all kinds of advisors, there’s tons of tutoring help, students get to know their professors, they get in on cutting-edge research without difficulty, etc. How much better can Princeton do than that?</p>
<p>Hell, I had sent an email to the CS department at Stanford, and received two very long and thoughtful responses from two top faculty at Stanford (leaders in CS and linguistics—one is a MacArthur Fellow), and I wasn’t even a freshman! Honestly, if that isn’t “undergraduate-focused,” I don’t know what is. :)</p>
<p>Stanford is just so incredibly well-rounded that it isn't funny. Period.</p>
<p>Princeton, Stanford, Brown, Dartmouth.</p>
<p>If science / tech inclined, then I'd give preference to Stanford or Princeton.
If business is the long term goal then Dartmouth, Stanford or Princeton.
Pre-law would go to Princeton, Brown and Stanford.</p>
<p>^^ Brown isn't even on the OP's list... and you left out MIT and Caltech.</p>
<p>Stanford is the most well rounded on the OP's list. Great campus, laid back students, top 5 overall academics, amazing faculty, solid sports, awesome location, nice year-round weather. It really does not get muc better than Stanford.</p>
<p>Second on the list would be Princeton. Like Stanford, Princeton has top 5 academics, an amazing faculty and a good location. the weather and athletics are not nearly as good, but they aren't bad. </p>
<p>Third would be either MIT or Dartmouth. MIT has top 5 academics, an amazing faculty and a great location and Dartmouth has a fun and laid back student body but in a not-so-central location. </p>
<p>Fifth would be Caltech. Great Science programs and nice weather, but nothing else!</p>
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Undergrads get the most attention from professors, and they don't have to compete with grad students for research & fellowship opportunities.
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This is a misconception I see a lot from students at schools without a lot of graduate students.</p>
<p>Graduate students don't take away research opportunities from undergrads -- they create them. As a graduate student at Harvard, I am mentoring an undergrad for the summer who will continue to work with me more and more independently until he completes his senior thesis. If I were not in the lab, my faculty advisor would not have taken another undergrad for the lab -- there would have been no one to mentor him. Grad students and postdocs create, not limit, the opportunity for undergrads to work on cutting-edge science.</p>
<p>Incidentally, as an undergrad at MIT, I never felt that I got less attention from faculty than the graduate students I knew, primarily because I felt that undergrads were treated very much like graduate students. I loved that feeling of being taken intellectually seriously and challenged, and I wouldn't have given that up for an "undergraduate-focused" experience of being patted on the head.</p>
<p>Chicago .</p>
<p>And thus the dilemma increases ....</p>
<p>Stanford is only about 35% undergraduates. Princeton and Dartmouth are over 70% undergraduates.</p>
<p>I was once told by an engineering professor who earned his PhD at Stanford that Stanford was not necessarily a good school for engineering undergraduates.</p>
<p>my vote is for Georgetown</p>
<p>"Graduate students don't take away research opportunities from undergrads -- they create them. As a graduate student at Harvard, I am mentoring an undergrad for the summer who will continue to work with me more and more independently until he completes his senior thesis."</p>
<p>At some schools, professors mentor grad students, and grad students mentor undergrads. At other schools professors directly mentor the undergrads. At Princeton, I worked on an independent summer research with guidance of a professor after my freshman year. Let me ask you which would be better for an undergrad: being mentored by a grad student (who may or may not go into teaching) or by a professor? I'm sure that you are a good mentor; however, the advantages created by a school's focus on the undergrads have to be felt (at Princeton, Dartmouth, Williams, etc.) to be truly appreciated.</p>
<p>adrivit-When you do research in college, would you rather be mentored by a grad student or by a full professor?</p>
<p>Rice, Davidson, Georgetown, William & Mary, Duke are all great undergrad experiences.</p>
<p>Well, I'm the direct mentor, and my undergrad and I work as a team, but he still gets plenty of time with our PI.</p>
<p>The tradeoff of being in a school with very few graduate students is that the research programs are generally not as strong and the faculty members are not as distinguished in their fields. My undergrad and I are being mentored by one of the top researchers in our field, so the research he is doing is fundamentally different from the research he would be doing in a less eminent lab.</p>
<p>Students from research universities could easily choose to do research at non-research universities for the summer (or in a small lab at a research school -- many of the labs at Harvard Medical School have no graduate students) and be directly mentored by a professor. Generally, they do not choose to do this, because they see advantages in being in top-flight labs doing high-quality, publishable research.</p>
<p>That's not to say that a research school or a competitive lab is the right choice for everyone, but I think it's a much more attractive choice than many people tend to paint it as.</p>
<p>IPBear, that's certainly a valid comment. However, one thing you must remember is that you can be mentored by a Professor at a school with a large grad school, such as Stanford. In fact, when visiting Stanford an Electrical Engineering Professor told me that the "best" Professors got to teach undergrads because ug classes were smaller, thus increasing your chance as an undergrad of being taken under the wing of an elite Professor. Furthermore, even if you are mentored by a grad student at Stanford, chances are you'll be engaging in even more cutting edge research at Stanford than at Princeton...especially since you seem to have a natural science/ engineering slant. (Looks like I complemented Molliebatmit's post)</p>
<p>I have a question. Why haven't any of the top LACs been included in this discussion? If we're strictly talking about undergrad experience, then doesn't Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore, Pomona, etc need to be mentioned? Nearly all classes are taught by professors, most faculty is full time, the student/teacher ratio is very low, the endowment per student is very high, etc. In these categories, the top LACs are competitive with or better than the universities mentioned so far in this thread. </p>
<p>I'm not saying that these LACs are definitely the best undergraduate experiences, but considering their focus solely on undergrads and the high quality of professors, access to professors (and thus great, personalized research opportunities), resources, and academic rigor, don't they warrant being mentioned?</p>
<p>"The tradeoff of being in a school with very few graduate students is that the research programs are generally not as strong and the faculty members are not as distinguished in their fields."</p>
<p>Princeton faculty members are just as distinguished as Stanford's in their respective fields.</p>
<p>Well he was asking us to rate certain universities from the first post...thats why LAC's weren't mentioned.</p>
<p>Hallowarts, even though we can't argue who's faculty is stronger, we can point to awards and honors such as Nobel Prize winners, National Academy of Science Members, and I'd think Stanford would come out on top. Just putting it in perspective.</p>
<p>My mistake. I got so caught up reading the 4 pages of responses that I forgot the OP had a specific list he wanted ranked.</p>
<p>The question of how the top LACs compare to the to the top Universities with regard to undergrad experience is still an interesting question and probably deserving of its own thread.</p>