<p>Which is better for undergraduate chemistry major?</p>
<p>UVa is ranked higher than Wisconsin in usnews.
However, Wisconsin has a well-reputed Chemistry Department.</p>
<p>What's your opinion? (prestige & academic's quality)</p>
<p>Wisconsin>>>>sciences. UW is in the Top 10 while UVa is 50th for Chemistry.</p>
<p>Agree…</p>
<p>But, if you’re in-state for UVa, and out-of-state for UW-M, then it may not be worth the big difference in cost. If you’re OOS for UW-M and need aid, you won’t get what you’d need. </p>
<p>Cost of attendance
In-state UVA = $21k
OOS UW-M = $35k</p>
<p>But, if you can pay full-freight at either, then pick UW-M</p>
<p>Here are the old NRC data for Ph.D. program rankings … in academia, rankings don’t move a lot over a mere 15 years.</p>
<p>Chemistry</p>
<p>1 Cal Berkeley 4.96
2 Cal Tech 4.94
3 Stanford 4.87
4 Harvard 4.87
5 MIT 4.86
6 Cornell 4.55
7 Columbia 4.54
8 Illinois 4.48
9 Wisconsin 4.46
10 UCLA 4.46
11 Chicago 4.46
12 Yale 4.38
13 Texas 4.28
14 Northwestern 4.23
15 Texas A&M 4.11
16 Indiana 3.99
17 North Carolina 3.97
18 Penn State 3.95
19 Cal San Diego 3.95
20 Princeton 3.92
21 Minnesota 3.89
22 Ohio State 3.87
23 Cal San Francisco 3.86
24 Purdue 3.83
25 Penn 3.78
26 Iowa State 3.76
27 Johns Hopkins 3.74
28 Washington 3.70
29 Rice 3.70
30 Florida 3.67
31 Utah 3.63
32 Rochester 3.63
33 Cal Santa Barbara 3.57
34 Pittsburgh 3.56
35 Michigan 3.53
36 Cal Irvine 3.52
37 Colorado State 3.50
38 Emory 3.37
39 Michigan State 3.35
40 Southern Cal 3.34
41 Oregon 3.31
42 Colorado 3.30
43 Virginia 3.29</p>
<p>Note #9 and #43.</p>
<p>Whether these research/faculty dominated rankings are relevant to undergraduate Chemistry education is for you to determine.</p>
<p>OP, re: the posting about cost, you should know that #21 UMinn two years ago dropped it’s out-of-state tuition to only about $4,000 more than in-state. UMinn Tuition/Fees for OOS are about $23,000, and including books/travel/personal are about $26,000.</p>
<p>Hey Dunnin…don’t mean to hijack, but do you have the PhD rankings for math?</p>
<p>Sure, a nice website to bump around in:</p>
<p>[NRC</a> Rankings in Each of 41 Areas](<a href=“http://www.stat.tamu.edu/~jnewton/nrc_rankings/nrc41indiv.html]NRC”>http://www.stat.tamu.edu/~jnewton/nrc_rankings/nrc41indiv.html) see #31, Mathematics.</p>
<p>Start here do get the 5 main areas in aggregation: [NRC</a> Rankings](<a href=“NRC Rankings”>NRC Rankings)</p>
<p>I5 year old data. When the new rankings come out there will obviously have been some slight movement.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the opinions. Btw, I am an international student.</p>
<p>^^^^</p>
<p>Ahhh…can you pay “full-freight”?</p>
<p>yup. actually i am going to US under scholarship.</p>
<p>Congrats!!! You’re lucky!!! :)</p>
<p>Thx. But actually i havn’t got acceptance from any university. Wisconsin & Virginia are two which I applied to.</p>
<p>Well, if your stats are high, and you’re a full pay, that might help! 
Good luck!</p>
<p>The USNWR graduate programs rankings are 15 years more recent and probably more reliable at this point in time. Although I agree that universities overall do not change much in 15 years, single departments do. </p>
<p>At any rate, for science majors, I would recommend Wisconsin over UVa.</p>
<p>Thx.</p>
<p>I got the idea now.</p>
<p>At first I was uncertain because I thought that Virginia’s prestige (CC’s top uni, higher ranking…) would compensate its lower ranking in science.</p>
<p>Wisconsin…</p>
<p>The NRC data in post #4 is very outdated. It was a couple of years old when it was published 16 or so years ago. During the interim a lot has changed including the loss of and addition of many faculty members at Wisconsin.
Wisconsin & Virginia are both very good schools offering different environments. In my opinion, based on the info. shared in your post, you can’t make a wrong choice if you visit each university before deciding.</p>
<p>THe following is from a conusulting report done for UVa in 2007 concerning improving UVA sciences and engineering</p>
<p>Chemistry
The chemistry department has 25 tenured/tenure-track (TT) faculty from CLAS and two
members from other UVA schools. Most faculty members are active researchers. The
department prides itself on the interdisciplinary work carried out by its faculty as well as
the breadth of technical areas represented. Their undergraduate program is among the top
10 producers of bachelor’s degrees in the US. The department ranked nationally as
number 42 in USNWR’s 2007 graduate program rankings and could not maintain even
this relatively low standing, dropping to number 50 in the recently released 2008
rankings. This is too low for UVA’s research aspirations. The department may not be
big enough both to produce top quality undergraduates in relatively large numbers and
achieve eminence in graduate research. It lacks the necessary infrastructure, TA’s and
other support for graduate students.
The department has sought for many years to grow to 28-30 faculty members on a
sustained basis in order to carry out their programs and raise their national rankings.
They participated in the successful BOV distinguished faculty recruitment and recently
made an offer to a highly regarded junior person. One measure of their current standing
is that retention of faculty members is a real issue. For the requested growth and to deal
with faculty recruited away, they seek permission for two recruitments per year for
several years. In addition to faculty lines, the limiting resource for recruiting new faculty
is startup support.</p>
<p>General Impressions of CLAS
A Strong Foundation: There are eight science departments in CLAS: Astronomy,
Biology, Chemistry, Environmental Science, Mathematics, Physics, Psychology, and
Statistics. From a national reputation perspective, two departments are outstanding
(Astronomy and Environmental Science) and there are definitely areas of excellence in
others.</p>
<p>The UVA CLAS departments in the sciences that we visited comprise, in the main,
dedicated teachers most of whom strive to be active in research in their respective
scientific fields. They have a good sense of the most important areas of current research,
where they stand in addressing the important scientific questions, where they want to go
to improve their research capabilities, and their rank among other competitive
institutions.
For CLAS science departments, the total research expenditure is about $45.3M for 187
faculty with a modest average of $242K per faculty member.10 Most departments are
suboptimal in faculty number when compared to their top tier peers. With some
exceptions (for example, Caltech, Princeton), if one plots number of faculty against NRC
ranking, there is a clear correlation. The more top class faculty the more funding they
bring in and the more and better quality graduate students they attract. The combination
leads to higher funding and enhanced reputation.
Recovering from Stagnation: Unless the science departments of CLAS achieve
significantly improved rankings, UVA cannot realize its goal of attaining national
standing as a research university. Some of the issues discussed as university-wide at the
end of this report have special relevance to CLAS.
The recent period of reduced and flat budgets and hiring freezes hurt the science
departments at UVA, some more than others. In several cases, departments feel they are
“playing catch-up” and request the resources and faculty lines to regain the sizes they
previously had. We are persuaded that in all cases, there are good strategic arguments
being made based on new scientific directions and current strengths to justify requests for
additional positions. Likewise, departments that fared better during the period of extreme
fiscal constraint also see faculty growth as being essential to retaining or improving their
current national rankings. In both categories, growth in research-active faculty is being
requested. Such growth, if adequate in number, funded and managed well, is probably
the single most important step that can be taken to improve the research standing of
UVA’s CLAS science departments.
Of course, the vital resources of research space and startup funding must also be secured
to go along with recruiting. Two special areas of concern at UVA are the relatively poor
condition of several buildings that house some of its science departments and the age
profile of the faculty – these issues are by no means unique to UVA, but they make it
even more difficult to effect significant growth in research productivity that would
receive national attention.
We concluded that all of the science departments we visited warrant the kind of growth
outlined to us and reported here if UVA is to achieve significantly higher standing as a
nationally important research university. We trust the judgments of these departments to
select the most important areas in which to hire, recognizing that any particular hire
represents a complex negotiation between the department, the dean, the provost and other</p>
<p>Overcoming a History of Disappointment: Without knowing if the faculty comments are
justified or not, The Washington Advisory Group needs to report a widespread sense of
malaise and frustration in the science faculty within CLAS. It derives from the feeling
that UVA’s low standing as a ranking research university is due to a long history of
comparatively low priority for science in the allocation of internal funds.
Various strategic planning efforts in the recent past (and underway now) have not helped
the situation. Stated goals from previous planning efforts, including projected hiring and
fund raising plans, failed to materialize as advertised, leaving departments frustrated and
faculty unwilling to contribute more time to efforts perceived as being unable to achieve
tangible results that benefit their department or their work.
When departments and their faculty members perceive themselves to be unrecognized by
the university’s leadership, strategic planning suffers because the main incentives become
to protect current, limited assets rather than to seriously plan for the future. This is a
serious matter at UVA. For example, too many research-active faculty members we
interviewed expressed no knowledge of, or any particular interest in the ongoing
activities of “the Commission” which is currently planning initiatives for the university’s
ongoing major fund raising drive. These faculty members are dubious of top-down
efforts to define research directions with token requests for faculty input. Such
approaches are often too-little/too-late and can alienate dedicated faculty members.
Indeed, the accumulated frustrations over unfulfilled growth plans, unsolicited strategic
research directions promulgated by the university, and perceived minimal efforts for
significant involvement of faculty in actual planning exercises, prompted some
individuals we interviewed to propose separation of their departments from CLAS. We
do not think that such a separation will enhance the research stature of UVA, or that it has
significant support, but mention it here as evidence of the beginning of a breakdown in
trust between university administrators and a number of science faculty members that
deserves attention by all concerned. Regaining a sense of teamwork and trust among all
the science departments in CLAS should be an important objective for the new dean and
provost.
Graduate Students: Along with publications and research funds the ability to attract top
tier graduate students is a leading indicator of recognized quality. Of particular
importance and not generally recognized is the fact that quality research-active graduate
students can enable their faculty advisors to compete more successfully for federal
research grants. UVA must make the necessary investments to attract quality graduate
students.
A worrisome example: We are told that with 7 incoming students per year, distributed
among 27 faculty, the average faculty member in Biology sees a new student once every
four years. Biology has had assistant professors come up for tenure never having
supervised a graduate student. This is a serious problem, one that can significantly
damage the career development of junior faculty.
Laudatory Goals of CLAS: We emphatically agree with the goals of CLAS as stated on
its web site11, but suggest that it will take a concerted effort in rebuilding trust and
establishing realistic plans on the part of the college and the science departments to
achieve these admirable aspirations. We view the science faculty at UVA to be well
positioned to contribute to realistic research planning.
As the university and its science departments develop their future programs, everyone
should be mindful of the national consequences of their efforts. The special UVA
undergraduate student body is one example – they and their shared experiences at UVA
are a national treasure. A substantial investment across the board in its science
departments will be noticed throughout the scientific community. In pursuing these
investments, we hope that UVA will be agile enough to respond to special national needs
and opportunities.
One example is the new National Radio Astronomer Observatory (NRAO) science center
to be located in Charlottesville. This will be an important national scientific resource;
how UVA responds to it can make the difference between the center being another
federal science facility or developing, along with UVA, into a scientific establishment
that will shape an important area of astronomy for generations to come. Such rare
opportunities are special.
Concluding Observation: The College is arguably a key to UVA’s distinction as one of
the best universities in the country in which to seek an undergraduate education. Liberal
arts majors increasingly will need high quality introductions to science and statistics as
they prepare for productive roles in an ever more technology-based globalized economy.
So, demand for teaching by the science departments is sure to rise. At the same time,
CLAS will have to be substantially more productive in research if UVA is to rise in
national stature as a research university. It is important to note that this goal is now an
expressed aspiration of the Board of Visitors and the Administration and has the support
of the Science Faculty. Also, as Virginia struggles to find its place in the rapidly
changing global economy, it will realize that competing states view the high or increased
standing of their research universities as important parts of a strategy for economic
growth.
Success in achieving this goal will depend primarily on two factors: a) availability
adequate financial resources to support recruitment of new research proven faculty and to
improve the space and infrastructure for existing and new faculty, and b) know-how and
success in identifying and competing for such individuals. The Washington Advisory
Group believes that the UVA faculty has the know how and can successfully identify top
flight candidates. The availability of resources and their wise allocation will be the
overriding factors that will determine success</p>
<p>In contrast the UW chemistry facutly is much larger and award-winning</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.chem.wisc.edu/content/awards[/url]”>http://www.chem.wisc.edu/content/awards</a></p>
<p>Gifford: I think the latest usnews also shows similar ranking. </p>
<p>Barrons: Thx. I actually read the whole report. Now I can see the difference is really bigger than what I have thought of.</p>
<p>Impressed. How did you find it? I have a copy but can’t find the souce anymore.</p>