<p>How's the Chemistry department at UIUC like? The quality of faculty? The student-to-faculty ratio? The strength and rigour of the program? Courseload? How good is it compared to Stanford's?</p>
<p>Thanks in advance!</p>
<p>Bump??
im curious as well</p>
<p>i just finished taking chem 101, which is supposed to be the first chem class you take if you suck at chem. I ended up with a B- in it, which is pretty decent compared to how busy i was last semester. If you want an A, you can definitely work towards it. I had gretchen adams, and she was awesome. check out ratemyprofessors.com and sort by department and see how the faculty looks. the TAs were all white americans, which is way better than the broken english you will get from the math TAs. student to faculty is overrated. the lecture had a couple hundred students in it, which is good because it means you have a higher chance of knowing people in the class and being able to sit with them, and ask them if you dont get something, as opposed to being in a class of 20 strangers, which is what your discussion section will be like: you have the lecture of a couple hundo students then the discussion class once a week with a TA and like 20 students, talking about the homework and all that. </p>
<p>If I wanted to major in chemistry and was able to go to stanford, id go to stanford, as our chem dept isnt very well known i dont think.</p>
<p>This is U.S. News' ranking of Chemistry PHD programs, which is typically a measure of the departments strength (not necessarily undergraduate teaching, however). </p>
<ol>
<li>
MIT
Berkeley
3.
Caltech
Harvard
Stanford</li>
<li>
UIUC</li>
</ol>
<p>maybe that explains why the chem TAs are way better than the math TAs</p>
<p>as far as undergrad though, i have no idea.</p>
<p>that was in response to the chem department not being well known.</p>
<p>right...</p>
<p>if they are ranked so close together, you shouldnt be investigating the strength of the programs at stanford and uiuc, but rather the schools themselves. They're pretty different schools, do you know what else you want in a school besides something prestigious to put on your resume?</p>