<p>Does anyone know which colleges have the more reputable Ecology & Evolutionary Biology departments?</p>
<p>Per the NRC grad rankings, in roughly this order: Princeton/WUStL; Duke/ Harvard/Indiana/Chicago; Columbia; Berkeley; Emory/Yale; Davis/Minnesota; Arizona/Colorado Sate/Maryland; Dartmouth/UCSB; Oregon State (Zoology)/UCI/UCSC; Michigan/UCR/Colorado; Michigan State/Washington State (Zoology); Georgia; North Carolina; Illinois; Rice/Cornell/Texas; Montana/Purdue; Stony Brook; Nebraska/ Brown; Connecticut/Kansas/Michigan State (Zoology)/New Mexico (biology)/Florida (Zoology)/Idaho (Biology); San DiegonState/Alaska-Fairbanks (Biosciences); UCLA; Houston.</p>
<p>Since these are grad rankings, they don’t give you a good idea about the quality of undergrad teaching, but they do give you an idea of department strength.</p>
<p>With the exception of MIT, Hopkins, Brandeis, CMU, and a few other colleges, most universities have decent ecology programs. The focus on ecology is not as good as it should be, in my opinion, since many universities seized the opportunity to downsize when merging botany and zoology departments into ecology/evolution programs, but nevertheless most flagship publics and many private universities provide adequate preparation. I would focus on other factors like size, location, selectivity, and affordability. </p>
<p>zapfino’s list covers most of the major EEB programs. The rankings would shift according to personal interests (e.g. Chicago would move up slightly for evolutionary bio and down several for ecology), but they’re all quite good. Stanford, Penn, and Wisconsin are curiously missing and certainly belong on any list of good EEB programs; NC State, U Washington, Oklahoma, and Humboldt State are also excellent. I emphasize again that most universities are adequate, though – I would start selecting colleges by strength in ecology only after drawing up a tentative list based on other factors. </p>
<p>Good programs among LACs are a little more difficult to find, although most LACs should be at least decent. Allegheny, Bowdoin, Colgate, the College of the Atlantic, Conn College, Davidson, Denison, Eckerd, Juniata, Middlebury, Oberlin, Ohio Wesleyan, Swarthmore, Warren Wilson, Wesleyan, and Whitman are particularly good.</p>
<p>Thank you! Helped a lot.</p>