High percentage of graduate students

College Search & Selection
1

<p>I'm fairly new to the college search process. In my research, I have come across two statistics that are provided by many institutions, which are:</p>

<p>number of undergraduate students and number of graduate students</p>

<p>I have noticed that a few of the institutions I am interested in seem to have a high rate of graduate students compared to the number of undergraduates. For example, at Duke more then 50% of the total student population is made up of graduate students. If I look at Notre Dame and Brown, roughly 30% of the total student population is made up of graduate students. </p>

<p>Are there concerns about the percentage of graduate vs undergraduate students at a particular institution?</p>

2

<p>50% isn’t that unusual. You see similar things at Caltech and USC. It’s kind of unusual to see more graduate students than undergrad though, as you see with Columbia (undergrads are roughly 8k; grads are roughly 20k)</p>

3

<p>Undergraduates subsidize graduate students. At a place like Duke, the undergrads are not the primary priority.</p>

4

<p>Below are several universities that have fewer undergrads and graduate students:</p>

<p>Johns Hopkins University: 4,700 undergrads (25%), 14,500 graduate (75%)
Columbia University: 8,000 undergrads (30%), 19,000 graduate (70%)
Harvard University: 7,000 undergrads (33%), 14,000 graduate (67%)
University of Chicago: 5,000 undergrads (33%), 10,000 graduate (67%)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology: 4,300 undergrads (40%), 6,500 graduate (60%)
Washington University-St Louis: 6,000 undergrads (43%), 8,000 graduate (57%)
California Institute of Technology: 1,000 undergrads (45%), 1,200 graduate (55%)
Duke University: 6,500 undergrads (45%), 8,000 graduate (55%)
Northwestern University: 8,500 undergrads (45%), 10,500 graduate (55%)
Stanford University: 7,000 undergrads (45%), 8,500 graduate (55%)
Yale University: 5,300 undergrads (45%), 6,300 graduate (55%)</p>

5

<p>I’m confused, is this a good or a bad thing? Also, what is the desired ratio between undergraduate and graduate students?</p>

6

<p>It’s really not that confusing. Alexandre’s list shows nothing but great schools that attract far more applicants than they can admit. The fact that there are more graduate students does not deter from these schools providing excellent undergraduate educations with more opportunities than the students can capitalize upon. Having said that, the same could be said of a list of the top Liberal Arts Colleges which will have few or no graduate students. There are countless threads comparing LACs and Research Universities which argue the pluses and minuses of the two approaches. There may in fact be a desired ratio of undergrads to grad students, but that desired ratio is different for everyone.</p>

7

<p>Even correct statistics can be misleading. Take Hopkins for example. Alexandre correctly states that Hopkins has @4700 undergraduates and 14,500 graduate students. But only about 1800 of those graduate students are full time masters and Ph.D students on the Homewood campus where the undergraduates are. The other graduate students are on other campuses and many are part-time students who will never interact with undergraduates in any way. In other words, the better comparison is to compare undergraduates with graduate students who are sharing the same facilities and faculty. Viewed this way, there are 2 1/2 undergraduates for every graduate student.</p>

<p>Graduate students get much more one on one mentoring from faculty than do undergraduates, particularly PhD students who have passed their comprehensive exams and are working on their dissertation. I suppose if a faculty member has too heavy a load of PhD mentees that it could adversely effect their ability to spend time with undergraduates, but this rarely seems to be the case. Generally speaking, I think that having lots of graduate students around is more helpful than harmful. Most serve as teaching assistants and they are a great resource for undergraduates with questions or problems.</p>

8

<p>As bonanza explained, the number of graduate students is a complicated issue. Looking at the number of graduate students at my alma mater (8000), you’d think undergraduates are greatly outnumbered there. You must consider, however, what that number contains – law students, medical students, business students, nursing students, divinity students, etc. Each of these professional schools has its own professors, administration, career center, library, dining facility, building(s), etc. In terms of the overall size of the university - the number of people who will be bustling about on campus - yes, all of these may be worth consideration. </p>

<p>When thinking about things relevant to your education, which includes things like time with professors, research opportunities, lab space, etc., you need to worry more about the ratio of undergraduates to graduate students in relevant fields like arts & sciences and/or engineering, since those are the students with which you’d be competing.</p>

<p>The undergraduate:graduate ratios in arts & science and engineering for the top 20 universities are listed below. Where possible, I separated them into separate listings.</p>

<p>Engineering
Stanford Engineering 0.26:1
JHU Engineering 0.52:1
Columbia Engineering 0.63:1
Yale Engineering 0.86:1
Penn Engineering 1.07:1
Dartmouth Engineering 1.10:1
Harvard Engineering 1.23:1
Duke Engineering 1.60:1
Cornell Engineering 1.73:1
Rice Engineering 1.80:1
Princeton Engineering 1.83:1
Brown Engineering 2.67:1
Vanderbilt Engineering 3.14:1
Northwestern Engineering 4.86:1
WUStL Engineering 6.26:1</p>

<p>Mixed A&S/Engineering
MIT 0.67:1
Caltech 0.78:1 </p>

<p>A&S
JHU A&S 1.11:1
Northwestern A&S 1.38:1
Chicago 1.52:1
Harvard A&S 1.73:1 (2.07:1 without Medical Science)
Yale A&S 1.98:1
Stanford A&S 2.05:1
Columbia A&S 2.07:1
WUStL A&S 2.17:1
Vanderbilt A&S 2.24:1
Princeton A&S 2.35:1
Duke A&S 2.58:1
Penn A&S 2.89:1
Rice A&S 2.98:1
Cornell A&S 3.51:1
Brown A&S 4.33:1
Dartmouth 6.91:1</p>

<p>I excluded Notre Dame because I couldn’t find a good breakdown of its enrollment statistics and Emory because Oxford complicates things.</p>

9

<p>It really doesn’t affect your day-to-day life, especially since in a lot of them the med school/business school/law school will be on a different part of campus or on a different campus entirely.</p>

10

<p>Sure it effects your life. What a University’s priorities are has huge impact. A an underfed choosing a school that makes undergrds a priority makes good sense.</p>

11

<p>Waverly, I do not think a school shortchanges undergrads in favor of graduate students, particuarly not the very wealthy ones that have the means to support both their undergrads and their graduate students. </p>

<p>Where I think a low percentage of undergrads can impact a campus community is in the general campus environment. In matters of school spirit and whimsy. Undergrads are…well, goofy!</p>

12

<p>I think it is important when selecting a college to consider how much attention the undergraduates get, vs. the graduate students. But I don’t think counting the % of graduate students is particularly informative, at least not much beyond if the school is a University with graduate students at all vs. a LAC without any. </p>

<p>Especially the presence or absence of professional schools, which usually have completely different faculty and sometimes different campuses, won’t have very much impact on the faculty attention level on undergraduates among those professors who actually teach the undergrads.</p>

<p>I think some Universities do shortchange undergrads in favor of grad students, or at the very least, different Universities do have differing amounts of focus on undergrads. Perhaps % of undergrad vs grad students for a particular department might be slightly helpful, but probably the best way is to speak to students to get an sense of the University’s priorities.</p>

<p>My son is an undergrad at WashU, which is on Alexandre’s list as having more grad students than undergrad students, and is a mid-size research U. Yet, I consider it to have a strong undergrad focus. The large number of grad students is probably much more due to the professional schools (law, medicine, allied health, business) than a particularly large graduate College of Arts & Sciences. As an undergrad with an interest in going to law school, he has benefited from the presence of a law school at the University in ways that I wouldn’t have anticipated back when he was trying to select a college.</p>

13

<p>My own university [Illinois</a> Institute of Technology](<a href=“http://www.iit.edu%5DIllinois”>http://www.iit.edu) has about 5000 graduate students and 2600 undergraduates. Many of the graduate students are Masters or professional students (not all Ph.D. students). What I can say is that the attention paid to undergraduates is not dependent on the number of graduate students there are but on the number of undergraduates and the typical class size. Therefore, a school like IIT has a small school feel for its undergrads but significant research opportunities available to them.</p>

<p>Many of the schools listed above have the same properties.</p>