<p>Brown and Dartmouth are not really major research universities. They are more like liberal arts colleges that have some limited and mediocre graduate programs. They attract little research funding and there is little groundbreaking work done at Brown or Dartmouth. When I read Nature or Science or Cell or any of the top scientific research journals, I hardly ever see a paper from Brown or Dartmouth.</p>
<p>So it's not fair to compare these schools with Harvard. As far as other top research universities are concerned, they are not all that different from Harvard. Professors at these schools are hired and promoted based on research accomplishments, not based on teaching skills. See the other post.</p>
<p>"Professors at these schools are hired and promoted based on research accomplishments, not based on teaching skills."</p>
<p>That is also true of Brown and Dartmouth. It's not that they don't focus on research just as much as Harvard, Yale, MIT or Caltech, it's that they just don't have the monetary resources to be among the top institutions in it.</p>
<p>It's not true that all research universities have bad teaching. Some, like Yale, put a huge emphasis on top professors teaching undergrads. Others, like Berkeley and Harvard, view the undergrads as some kind of funding mechanism and guinea pigs for TAs and research. You have to investigate the particular place to find out.</p>
<p>Lol, not sure why you're posting a 2003 article that the crimson later published a complete about-face to this year (or maybe it was last year, I forget). Fact is, if anything Harvard's been putting more emphasis on undergrads lately (TF overhaul, gen ed reform, proposed calendar changes). Also, its true that undergrads are definitely a huge source of labor for professors, but I am DEFINITELY not going to complain considering that the end product is huge research opportunities for undergrads and we actually get to DO something, as opposed to serving as an extra set of hands in some doc-in-a-box's lab. I'm working in a stem cell lab and will probably get a Science or Nature publication by the time I graduate, I have a friend who has a patent pending on a medical device he created as part of his thesis work, and another friend was doing History research in Venice (Harvard funded of course) and discovered a series of Venetian trade documents from the 13th century that no one had ever seen before and are currently causing quite a stir in the field.</p>
<p>H-bomber, you are correct that Harvard offers undergraduates potential opportunities similar to what they would only find at a top university like MIT, Yale, Berkeley, Caltech or Stanford. However, that's not the point of criticism here. I think the criticism revolves more around the quality of teaching in general than whether or not you can get involved in meaningful research work with one or two professors. </p>
<p>However, you do bring up a good point regarding thesis work -- the fellowships for travel. Only Princeton and Yale can really match Harvard when it comes to providing incredible funding packages for any undergraduate to basically travel anywhere, at any time, to conduct his or her own research. This is a factor of Harvard having the third highest endowment per student, after Princeton and Yale. I have heard of many undergraduates at these schools getting full funding to travel to the middle of Africa or Japan for several months at a time to conduct sometimes-dubious research on very obscure topics. Whether or not the research itself is important though isn't really the point - the experiences are amazing.</p>
<p>Considering quality of life, education, alumni network, and post commencement opportunities for undergrad without reference to specific programs or fields of study: </p>
<p>Princeton
Harvard
Yale
(MIT)
(Stanford)
Columbia
Penn
Dartmouth
Brown
Cornell</p>