<p>I'm going to be a junior this fall, looking at colleges now though. I'm planning to major in chemistry, probably get a PhD. Are there specific colleges/universities that are great for chemistry and that I will have great research opportunities in? If it matters, I think my GPA will be around 4.1 weighted, 3.85 unweighted. Probably around 2000-2200 for SAT. Got 800 for Math IIC and 700 for Physics, will be taking Chem at the end of junior year.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t worry about specific schools yet. What I can say is the most important thing is going to be opportunities for research and a good culture around having meaningful mentorship as a researcher. Access to graduate coursework is also a huge plus in my mind and has made a big difference for my fellow chemistry concentrators.</p>
<p>Look for a culture of undergraduate research in the sciences, smaller lab groups (you want to work directly for the PI on your own project, not for a grad student or post-doc or not through multiple layers of a large group). You want to go somewhere that has a good culture of giving students publishing credit when they deserve it, and you want to go somewhere that’s also going to give you a strong teaching experience. Especially in chemistry, in my experience at many schools, teaching quality differs tremendously and may be the difference between being motivated to keep with it or causing you to “cool out” or “burn out” (depending on how you look at it) on science.</p>
<p>Also, LACs send huge numbers of people to graduate programs in chemistry, with Reed definitely being on the top of that list, IMO.</p>
<p>How would I look for those things? Ask around? See what the general consensus is? </p>
<p>You said that access to graduate coursework is a huge plus, how so? To further challenge yourself? And LACs don’t have graduate coursework…?</p>
<p>Graduate course work is a plus because it demonstrates your ability to work with the material on that level. Nearly every single chemistry concentrator at Brown, for instance, takes at least one, and often several, graduate level courses.</p>
<p>The way you figure it out is through reading and research like most people do when looking for colleges. Look first for other criteria-- you’re a junior and you’re not even sure what you’re going to do yet and it’s a long way off. Once you find schools that you feel are general fits, start to zero in on the experience as a scientist on that campus.</p>
<p>In general, I think the smaller research universities offer the best opportunities for undergraduates to get real hands-on research experience, strong mentoring and advising, and access to opportunities like graduate courses.</p>
<p>Schools like Reed don’t offer graduate level courses, but their entire education system is way more similar to graduate school than most undergraduate institutions are. The assumption that you’re there to learn and are intrinsically invested in your work, the thesis preparation and defense process, etc, are all authentic recreation of elements of a graduate education and will demonstrate your ability to perform at graduate school.</p>
<p>The Gourman Report ranks mostly universities, not LACs</p>
<p>Gourman Report undergrad chemistry ranking:
Caltech
UC Berkeley
Harvard
MIT
Columbia
Stanford
Illimois Urbana Champaign
U Chicago
UCLA
Wisconsin Madison
Cornell
Northwestern
Princeton
Yale
Purdue
UNC Chapel Hill
Ohio State
Texas Austin
Iowa State
Indiana Bloomington
UC San Diego
Minnesota
Notre Dame
Penn State
Brown
U Rochester
Carnegie Mellon
U Penn
Rice
Michigan Ann Arbor
U Washington
Colorado Boulder
Texas A&M
USC
U Pittsburgh
U Florida
UC Riverside
dartmouth
UC Santa Barbara
UC Irvine
Johns Hopkins
UC Davis
U Utah
U Oregon
Duke
Michigan State
RPI
UVA
Florida State
Vanderbilt
Case Western
u Iowa
Georgia Tech</p>
<p>I can honestly say as a chemist who graduated in 2009, I wouldn’t put much, or any stock into those Gourman rankings for undergraduate chemistry. It follows graduate rankings very closely, and in fact, based on how the graduate schools run in some of those schools I wouldn’t even consider it a great place for preparation even then (though it’s ranked high due to faculty quality).</p>
<p>Unfortunately, these ranks are based on faculty research quality and quantity, not learning experience. You can’t get into graduate school unless you know your stuff and have experience to demonstrate it, and some of those top schools do not offer the same ease of entry and strong mentorship during those experiences.</p>
<p>Thanks, guess I have a bit of researching to do</p>
<p>Northwestern’s chemistry is ranked #9. I can’t say if they got strong mentorship but quite a few chemistry majors have won prestigious awards like Fulbright and Cambridge Gates. There seems to be a lot of projects available for undergrad research. There’s a very strong collaboration between the department and other science/engineering/biomed departments. The school is home to one of the national research centers for nanotech.</p>
<p>Thanks, I’ll look into Northwestern. It looks like a nice school overall.</p>
<p>
Learning experience means different things to different people. How do you measure this?</p>
<p>Chemistry programs are very small. </p>
<p>The leading profs are engaged in leading research…why wouldn’t you want to learn from them and get research opportunities with them?</p>
<p>I’ve sat in or organic chemistry classes at 12 universities-- there’s a huge difference in the ability to convey information, and I’ve often found that a lot of that difference had to do with whether the faculty viewed teaching 150 freshman/sophomores, most of whom probably didn’t want to be there, as a reward or a punishment.</p>
<p>There are many schools where intro chem is reserved for anyone but the established best teachers, and there are many schools where teaching is not rewarded. This can be very tough in chemistry-- the rumors of professors who speak heavily accented, unclear English are really not too overstated, there are many places where this is true. And that’s just in the classroom…</p>
<p>I don’t really think that working in a lab group of 40 that’s constantly pumping out papers is going to provide the same mentoring experience and relationship that working in a lab group of 3 undergrads and 3 graduate students that only publishes twice a year is going to provide.</p>
<p>^ That is your experience…there are always some great lecturers and not so great lecturers on any faculty.</p>
<p>In fact, you can watch some great Berkeley Chem lectures on Youtube.</p>
<p>
I’ve never heard of a prof that has 40 in a lab group…12 tops.</p>
<p>A lot of the Harvard labs have about 20 people, 40 may have been exaggerating, though I’ve heard of groups like that when the professor’s were research appointments in biochemistry.</p>
<p>Of course there are great and not so great lecturers. What I’m saying is my experience is that at some schools (and I can’t name a common characteristic amongst them except that they hold this as a value) value teaching service more than others and as a result, in my experience, undergraduates have increased opportunities for exposure to great teaching faculty.</p>
<p>I worked in a lab that had 40 people in it. [url=<a href=“http://ink.primate.wisc.edu/~watkins/members.html]AVRL:”>http://ink.primate.wisc.edu/~watkins/members.html]AVRL:</a> Lab Members<a href=“admittedly,%20this%20lab%20had%20a%20split%20and%20some%20of%20the%20members%20went%20into%20a%20different%20one%20a%20few%20years%20after%20i%20left”>/url</a></p>
<p>So yes, labs with 40 people exist, but no, they don’t offer very good mentoring.</p>
<p>So in general, LACs have smaller classes, smaller labs, professors actually enjoy teaching, while the large universities have larger classes, larges labs, professors focus more on their research? (I understand there are exceptions)</p>
<p>I would say larger departments versus smaller departments, with a certain minimum size being very helpful because they’ll provide you with more insight and more varied research opportunities.</p>
<p>I’d also say you need a certain size because otherwise some equipment will be missing.</p>
<p>How would you find out the size of departments? Is it based on the # of faculty?</p>
<p>Berkeley has about 180 undergrad chemistry majors. It has about 50 chemistry professors.</p>
<p>[College</a> of Chemistry Facts](<a href=“http://chemistry.berkeley.edu/about/facts.html]College”>http://chemistry.berkeley.edu/about/facts.html)</p>
<p>You can look up information on other college’s websites.</p>
<p>Oh hah, thanks! Based on your experiences, what size seems to work well?</p>
<p>^ IMO, Berkeley’s size was great. I was a chemical engineering major, not a chemistry major but both majors reside in the “College of Chemisrty”. Chemistry is not a very popular major…so it is small and intimate in a large research university setting. </p>
<p>I don’t have experiences with smaller departments, so I can’t answer your question…but I second what modestmelody said in post #16.</p>