Hopkins is the most funded, but is its research better than the Ivys’?
And which Ivys are best as research universities?
Undergrads are usually working on the building blocks of scientific knowledge. At research universities, the grad students are the ones most immersed in research. You can sometimes get research opportunities as an undergrad, but you are going to be competing against grad students for the same opportunities. If I were you, I’d focus on the school that gives you the best classroom preparation in your area of study, and from those choices, ask what % of undergrads are doing research during the year. For summers, you can also apply to REUs at other colleges.
You don’t have to go to an Ivy or JHU for research experience. For example, my D2 goes to Harvey Mud. They have a strong commitment to giving frosh a summer research experience if they want it. My D is a junior. She has done 2 summers of research (is presenting at a conference this week and helping with a paper on last summer’s work), and getting course credit for researching in a lab in a different subject area this fall as well.
Research quality really depends on the area of research. Look at the faculty pages for each institution and see if there is anyone (or, even better: multiple people) doing research that you are especially interested in
Intparent obviously makes some very valid points, but also remember that with bigger institutions, even though you have more competition from grad students, that also means that you have more grad students to help set an example and to be mentors.
JHU has led the nation in higher education research spending for many years.
As for whose research is best, how would you assess that?
In theory, every PhD dissertation and every peer-reviewed journal article is an original contribution to knowledge. The value of one such contribution versus another is intrinsically hard to compare without expert knowledge, which tends to be highly specialized. So how would anyone begin to arrive at a generalized assessment of which universities are “best” at research in general?
The Times Higher Education World University Ranking looks at citations of faculty publications, among other factors. By that measurement - for whatever it’s worth - 17 other American universities (including Harvard, Princeton and UPenn) score higher than JHU.
You also could look at the number of major faculty awards or the percentage of faculty in national academies. The Washington Monthly tracks those numbers.
JHU ranks 38th for the former and 18th for the latter, according to WM. Most of the Ivies seem to rank higher in one or both of these measures.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/rankings-2015/national-universities-research.php
It’s hard to say to what degree heavy research spending, faculty publications/citations, or faculty awards trickle down to research opportunities for undergraduates. It must vary from field to field.
As a crude way to assess lasting impact on undergraduates, you could look at the number of PhDs per capita earned by alumni in various fields. The NSF has put out a study of baccalaureate origins of U.S.-trained science & engineering doctorate recipients:
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf13323/
See table 4 for the per capita ranking. Hopkins is #27 in that list. 5 of the 8 Ivies rank higher, but so do many small liberal arts colleges. It may be the case that 26 colleges do a better job than JHU of motivating and preparing undergraduates to do advanced STEM research … or it may be the case that more JHU students simply are choosing other paths besides academia (such as med school).
All good points. One needs to also distinguish if in these various methodologies it includes medical schools, which may color the number in actual research dollars.
FYI: iceberg lettuce
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