Princeton among the Ivies

Colleges and Universities A-Z Princeton University
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<p>"so a university with many professional schools only meant less proportional funding for the programs I wanted to study."</p>

<p>You can't make that generalization at all.</p>

<p>Undergraduate focus depends on a lot of factors that I mentioned above; student-faculty ratios are a big one, especially if you look at them carefully, as in, within the most popular departments for undergraduate majors. There are huge differences in that figure between Berkeley/Texas/Michigan and Yale/Princeton. Obviously the other factors I mentioned, such as accessibility of professors, office hours, professors who write recommendations, long research papers you have to write in the various advanced seminars (which you can take starting freshman year at Yale), etc., are also important. </p>

<p>Princeton does a great job with all of the above, but I would say Yale has the edge in these areas. </p>

<p>There is a reason why Yale is the only university on the list of the top 10 undergraduate institutions that produce future Ph.D.s. The other nine of the top 10 are small LACs. It has to do with Yale's LAC-like undergraduate focus, which no other school matches.</p>

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<p>posterx,
can you provide a source or link for the "list of the top 10 undergraduate institutions that produce future Ph.D.s" that you refer to in your post above?</p>

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<p>I assume this is that list: <a href="http://web.reed.edu/ir/phd.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://web.reed.edu/ir/phd.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>First of all, there are two other big universities in that top ten "All Disciplines" list, and both are in fact more productive with respect to Ph.D.s: MIT and the University of Chicago.</p>

<p>I wouldn't read too much into that "All Disciplines" list, though, since Princeton also makes a fine showing on these charts. Princeton and Yale show up on the lists of different subject areas in the following ways (Harvard is conspicuously absent):</p>

<p>Yale:
----Humanities
----History
----Foreign Languages
----Social Sciences
----English Literature</p>

<p>Princeton:
----Political Science
----Math & Computer Sciences
----Sciences & Engineering
----Physics
----Social Sciences</p>

<p>These run remarkably parallel to the traditional strengths of both universities.</p>

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<p>Here is another list (such lists are based on crunched NSF/IPEDS data):</p>

<p><a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/343141-harvard-v-lacs.html?highlight=phd+ipeds+all#post4132560%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/343141-harvard-v-lacs.html?highlight=phd+ipeds+all#post4132560&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>Princeton is undoubtedly better than Yale for undergraduate studies. Note 1. The absence of a business or law school to distract professors and 2. highest endowment per-student of any university in the world, most of which goes to undergraduates.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
The absence of a business or law school to distract professors

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Yeah, those Yale kids must hate it when their biology professors are off teaching finance at the business school.</p>

<p>The idea that a school is somehow incapable of dealing with undergraduates and graduates simultaneously is absurd.</p>