<p>I want to major in Math.
How is the undergrad math department?
The grad rank of Tufts seems very bad.
But from the website,I found that the math faculties are great.
So I am confused now.</p>
<p>Rankings don't matter, haven't you heard? ;)</p>
<p>As far as I'm concerned, the professors are great. Kinda quirky but really dedicated to their disclipine. Also, the professors are SO funny. I've taken classes with Todd Quinto and Kim Ruane and they can make calculus fun, which is a feat in itself!</p>
<p>Dr. Ruane is great and I can't say enough good things about Dr. Borgers. The man's a genius and he is a GREAT GREAT professor.</p>
<p>So,Tufts is a good choice,right?</p>
<p>I know rankings can't exactly reflect the facts.
But it seems too low,about 70th...</p>
<p>Does that mean Tufts is not a research university but a education university?</p>
<p>Tufts is a research university in every way definable.</p>
<p>the main reason why tufts ranks so low in the grad rankings is because we don't have a strong phd program. most of the resources at the math dept goes for undergrads. let me tell you, out of personal experience, tufts math dept has been the home to people who developed parts of string theory to defining dynamical systems as an academic discipline (boris hasselblatt and zbigniew nitecki, both still teach here).
you will not be disappointed with the prowess of the dept at all.</p>
<p>Ok,thanks guys.
I will apply to Tufts.</p>
<p>Yeah, like Ignited said, Tufts' departments are VERY focused on undergraduate eduction. They have really, really stellar professional graduate schools (vet, dentistry, medicine) as well as few top master's/PhD programs (health, nutrition, law & diplomacy/IR, philosophy, urban planning, engineering, etc.), but the math department just happens to be one that though it does have a PhD/master's sector, that sector is very small, but that doesn't really affect undergrads—instead, it's to our benefit.</p>
<p>Tufts, along with a few other schools in the country, is a very small research university. Rankings are skewed towards the very large reserach universities. Liberal arts colleges get their own ranking. It seems they should make a differetn ranking for schools like Tufts. (Other could include Rice, etc.)</p>
<p>Professor Todd Quinto is my favorite faculty member at Tufts. He's a world leader in the field of Tomography, and I can think of no one more interested in the growth of his undergrads than Prof Quinto. While I was a student at Tufts, he took an active interest not only in how I was doing with his class, but with all my classes, with how I was adapting socially, and what I was doing outside of class. I credit my relationship with him as being a defining aspect of my time as a Tufts student. </p>
<p>The work he's doing now in electron microscopy is incredibly interesting and may result in major breakthroughs in anti-viral drugs. In addition to all his own research, he mentors undergrads in their own projects. A classmate of mine, Jill Rennie, published a paper as sole author in a peer-reviewed journal as an undergraduate, and worked with Prof Quinto on her research. </p>
<p>I could go on for pages and pages on Prof Quinto, but he's just the awesome tip of a deep iceberg. There aren't many math departments that are as engaged in major research, and still place so much emphasis on the contributions of their undergraduate students.</p>