<p>The following list of top universities is sorted by undergraduate focus. I chose two ways to measure undergraduate focus: (1) the percent of undergraduate degrees awarded and (2) the percent of undergraduate enrollment. Then, I averaged the two percents.</p>
<p>My rationale is that larger numbers of graduate students distract faculty from undergrads. On the other hand, graduate programs can complement undergraduate programs. Perhaps there is an optimal balance between undergrad and grad focus. I think the optimum balance might be around 50%-75% undergrads, but I would be interested in hearing other opinions.</p>
<p>Undergraduate focus is not completely quantifiable. The culture and faculty reward system at the university plays a role. I'd like to hear your thoughts about that.</p>
<p>school, percent undergraduate degrees (BS, AS), percent undergrad enrollment, average of the two undergrad focus percents</p>
<p>Miami University-Oxford 88% 91% 90%
University of California-Santa Cruz 88% 90% 89%
Brigham Young University 84% 90% 87%
University of California-Riverside 85% 88% 87%
University of California-Santa Barbara 84% 86% 85%
Pennsylvania State University-Penn State Main Campus 84% 85% 85%
University of California-Irvine 81% 84% 82%
University of Delaware 80% 83% 82%
University of Colorado at Boulder 79% 83% 81%
University of California-San Diego 80% 82% 81%
Auburn University Main Campus 77% 82% 79%
Iowa State University 78% 80% 79%
Texas A & M University 77% 81% 79%
SUNY at Binghamton 78% 80% 79%
University of California-Davis 78% 79% 79%
Clemson University 75% 82% 78%
Baylor University 72% 84% 78%
Purdue University-Main Campus 75% 80% 78%
Michigan State University 75% 79% 77%
Rutgers University-New Brunswick/Piscataway 74% 78% 76%
Indiana University-Bloomington 72% 78% 75%
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University 72% 77% 75%
University of Georgia 72% 75% 73%
University of Missouri-Columbia 70% 76% 73%
Brown University 71% 74% 72%
The University of Texas at Austin 68% 75% 71%
University of Maryland-College Park 71% 72% 71%
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 64% 78% 71%
Worcester Polytechnic Institute 68% 74% 71%
College of William and Mary 66% 74% 70%
Ohio State University-Main Campus 66% 74% 70%
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 66% 74% 70%
University of California-Berkeley 68% 70% 69%
University of Connecticut 68% 69% 69%
Dartmouth College 65% 71% 68%
University of Iowa 64% 72% 68%
University of California-Los Angeles 66% 70% 68%
University of Wisconsin-Madison 68% 68% 68%
University of Washington-Seattle Campus 65% 70% 68%
Lehigh University 65% 69% 67%
University of Florida 65% 69% 67%
Clark University 58% 74% 66%
The University of Tennessee 60% 72% 66%
Princeton University 63% 68% 65%
Marquette University 61% 70% 65%
University of Notre Dame 64% 66% 65%
Cornell University 60% 69% 65%
Georgia Institute of Technology-Main Campus 60% 69% 64%
University of Miami 58% 67% 63%
Boston College 56% 68% 62%
University of Pittsburgh-Main Campus 58% 64% 61%
University of Minnesota-Twin Cities 58% 64% 61%
Saint Louis University-Main Campus 56% 66% 61%
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor 54% 67% 61%
Syracuse University 52% 67% 60%
University of Virginia-Main Campus 57% 62% 60%
Brandeis University 57% 62% 59%
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 56% 62% 59%
Wake Forest University 53% 64% 58%
Rice University 56% 60% 58%
Southern Methodist University 52% 58% 55%
Boston University 49% 59% 54%
University of Rochester 50% 56% 53%
Emory University 52% 54% 53%
Vanderbilt University 48% 55% 52%
Tufts University 50% 52% 51%
Washington University in St Louis 46% 55% 51%
Tulane University of Louisiana 38% 62% 50%
Carnegie Mellon University 40% 55% 48%
New York University 44% 51% 47%
University of Southern California 45% 50% 47%
Yeshiva University 46% 48% 47%
University of Pennsylvania 42% 50% 46%
Fordham University 40% 52% 46%
Duke University 43% 48% 45%
American University 43% 47% 45%
Georgetown University 39% 48% 44%
Northwestern University 38% 50% 44%
California Institute of Technology 45% 41% 43%
Yale University 39% 47% 43%
George Washington University 38% 44% 41%
University of Denver 33% 47% 40%
Massachusetts Institute of Technology 35% 40% 38%
Pepperdine University 32% 42% 37%
Case Western Reserve University 31% 43% 37%
Stanford University 36% 35% 35%
Stevens Institute of Technology 28% 38% 33%
Harvard University 27% 39% 33%
University of Chicago 26% 34% 30%
Columbia University in the City of New York 21% 36% 28%
Johns Hopkins University 27% 29% 28%</p>
<p>From my own limited experience, I would say this evaluation method isn't really very reliable. I attended UVa as an undergrad and grad student. For a U of its size, for whatever faults it may have, the undergrauduate focus was excellent- freshman classes might be somewhat large, but not nearly so large as many other schools well above it on your list. And even there, contact with professors and preponderance of instruction by permanent faculty was great, and it just got better in the upper level courses. By contrast, I have heard reports abut many schools high up on your list that characterize the undergrad. experience as mediocre -to -lousy.</p>
<p>The data fails to distinguish between graduate and professional students. Taking Duke as an example, the data above would have you believe that undergraduates make up 48% of the enrollment. While this is strictly true, this is because the data takes Duke's six professional schools (which have nothing to do with undergrads!) into account. </p>
<p>Universities with multiple professional schools (Yale, Harvard, Chicago, Hopkins, Columbia, et al) fare poorly in this. Although Harvard may have the same ratio of undergrads to grad students as Brown, Harvard is dragged down by its nine professional schools while Brown flits ahead with only its medical school.</p>
<p>If you take a close look at the University of Chicago, you will see that your correlation # of undergraduates= better undergraduate focus- is for the birds. The College at the U of Chicago, which is what the undergraduate school is called-has a professor/ student ratio 1/6, and is know for the focus on undergraduates and on the high quality of education all undergraduates receive there. There are few large classes, and students learn through close interaction with their professors and classmates.</p>
<p>Yes, on the face of it, it's very hard to believe that students would find more UG focus and attention at UCSC than at Stanford or Yale. </p>
<p>Collegehelp: do you have any way to break down financial resources as to how much or what percentage of spending is devoted to educating UG students versus graduate students at each college? That would be more telling.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I think just comparing the student/ professor ratio will give a clearer picture of "Undergraduate focus".
[/quote]
Not necessarily. Some schools have professors that only teach graduate students. At Chicago, for example, 10% don't teach undergrads (Duke does this too, but I don't know the %). When you factor in programs like neuroscience at UCSD or zoology at Cornell that are graduate-only, the faculty:student ratio gets murky. You also run into the problem of colleges including adjunct or even visiting professors in the totals.</p>
<p>This is a list of the same schools sorted by the percent of undergraduate degrees, excluding professional degrees like medicine and law, including PhDs and masters degrees. The list does not look much different.</p>
<p>jazzymom, I don't know how to get a separate budget for undergrads. </p>
<p>menloparkmom, U Chicago doesn't have an unusually high percent of classes under 20, doesn't have an unusually high retention rate or graduation rate. Sometimes reputations are not supported by evidence.</p>
<p>warblersrule86, I came up with 48% undergrad degrees, excluding professional degrees. How could that be so different from the enrollment statistics you quoted? Following are the professional degrees I excluded:
Chiropractic (D.C. or D.C.M.)
Dentistry (D.D.S. or D.M.D.)
Law (L.L.B., J.D.)
Medicine (M.D.)
Optometry (O.D.)
Osteopathic Medicine (D.O.)
Pharmacy (Pharm.D.)
Podiatry (D.P.M., D.P., or Pod.D.)
Theology (M.Div., M.H.L., B.D., or Ordination)
Veterinary Medicine (D.V.M.)</p>
<p>University of California-Santa Cruz 88%
Miami University-Oxford 88%
Brigham Young University 86%
University of California-Riverside 85%
Pennsylvania State University-Penn State Main Campus 84%
University of California-Santa Barbara 83%
University of California-Davis 82%
University of California-Irvine 82%
University of Colorado at Boulder 81%
University of Delaware 80%
Iowa State University 80%
Auburn University Main Campus 79%
University of California-San Diego 79%
Texas A & M University 78%
Baylor University 77%
Purdue University-Main Campus 77%
SUNY at Binghamton 77%
Michigan State University 77%
Rutgers University-New Brunswick/Piscataway 75%
University of Georgia 75%
Clemson University 74%
Indiana University-Bloomington 74%
Brown University 74%
College of William and Mary 73%
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University 73%
University of Missouri-Columbia 72%
University of Wisconsin-Madison 72%
Ohio State University-Main Campus 71%
The University of Texas at Austin 71%
University of Maryland-College Park 70%
University of Connecticut 70%
University of Florida 70%
University of California-Berkeley 70%
University of Iowa 69%
Marquette University 68%
Worcester Polytechnic Institute 68%
University of Washington-Seattle Campus 68%
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 67%
University of California-Los Angeles 67%
University of Notre Dame 67%
University of Miami 66%
The University of Tennessee 66%
Lehigh University 65%
Dartmouth College 65%
Saint Louis University-Main Campus 64%
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 64%
Cornell University 63%
Wake Forest University 63%
Princeton University 63%
Yeshiva University 63%
University of Virginia-Main Campus 62%
University of Minnesota-Twin Cities 62%
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 61%
Boston College 60%
University of Pittsburgh-Main Campus 60%
Emory University 60%
Georgia Institute of Technology-Main Campus 60%
Clark University 58%
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor 58%
Tufts University 57%
Rice University 56%
Brandeis University 55%
Southern Methodist University 55%
Vanderbilt University 54%
Syracuse University 54%
Boston University 53%
University of Rochester 52%
Washington University in St Louis 51%
Duke University 48%
American University 48%
Georgetown University 48%
University of Southern California 47%
Tulane University of Louisiana 47%
New York University 47%
University of Pennsylvania 46%
California Institute of Technology 45%
Fordham University 44%
Carnegie Mellon University 40%
Northwestern University 40%
George Washington University 39%
Stanford University 38%
Case Western Reserve University 38%
Yale University 38%
University of Denver 36%
Pepperdine University 36%
Massachusetts Institute of Technology 35%
Harvard University 30%
University of Chicago 28%
Johns Hopkins University 25%
Stevens Institute of Technology 23%
Columbia University in the City of New York 21%</p>
<p>Some schools have a rather low 4-yr graduation rate because there are heavy with 5-yr programs. This would tend to inflate the number of undergrads.</p>
<p>For example,
Va Tech 72% 77% 75% (52% graduate in 4 years)
UVA 57% 62% 60% (83% graduate in 4 years)</p>
<p>How many hours per week do faculty interact with students outside of class? 5? 15?</p>
<p>There is only a finite amount of a professors time to go around.
I would say that for every hour a faculty member spends with an undergraduate student, they spend 2 or 3 hours with a graduate student...gut feeling.</p>
<p>But, as I said, there are nevertheless important advantages for undergrads when there is a substantial graduate program. Where is the balance?</p>
<p>size can be a factor, but even medium sized Unis can be undergrad focused. I would submit that USC is much more undergrad-focused than Cal but your raw numbers would indicate otherwise.</p>
<p>"doesn't have an unusually high retention rate or graduation rate."
That is in part due to the known rigor of the curriculum at Chicago, and students find that out when they get here. Chicago does not have the reputation of "coddling" students once they have matriculated in order to push graduation rates up so they "look good" for USNews. Thus they have a higher % of students transfer out than at most Ivys. </p>
<p>"I would say that for every hour a faculty member spends with an undergraduate student, they spend 2 or 3 hours with a graduate student...gut feeling."</p>
<p>where on earh are you getting these numbers? At Chicago for instance, professors who teach in the College devote a number of years teaching undergraduates only , then rotate back into doing research with graduate students. Chicago has structured the College this way so undergraduates aren't "short changed", and receive the benefit of a professors full attention. Professors who are chosen or who choose to teach in the College aren't penalized for teaching undergraduates instead of doing research.
And the 1/6 ratio I mentioned is just for the Undergraduate school, not for the entire University.</p>
<p>Wow, to defend my school, and probably many others, your (OP) reasoning is highly flawed and extremely assumptive. "My rationale is that larger numbers of graduate students distract faculty from undergrads" is not the case at Hopkins, and many other schools, because the 4500 undergrads deal with professors who are advising only 1500 graduate students on the Homewood Campus. Our graduate enrollment is made up of 1500 grad students at Homewood who deal with the same professors undergrads do, plus all the graduates at SAIS, the Medical School, Peabody, Public Health, Education, Business--all of whose faculties are comprised of faculty who undergrads may only encounter for research opportunities. This is especially true of the med and public health schools.</p>
<p>So while yes, there are a lot of grad students, they don't detract, as you suggest, from attention paid to undergrads, because we only have to deal with the 1500 or so grad students on the Homewood Campus in A&S and Eng.
This is probably the case elsewhere.</p>
<p>All I can say is that trying to quantify focus on undergrads, mathematically, seems futile, because I guarantee you that it does not represent individual experiences, at all. Hopkins (JHU) is extremely nurturing of its undergrads. That's about all I can offer to this discussion. Facts, not hypotheses.</p>
<p>I've studied at the University of Chicago and work there now.
I don't think you could get a much better undergraduate education anywhere else.
Having said that, despite recent efforts, I wouldn't describe the University as undergraduate oriented at all. Unfortunately, the student numbers don't lie. Undergraduates are about a third of enrolled students. The University is best known for its PhD programs and professional schools, particularly Law and Business.</p>
<p>breakdown of actual class size is readily available on common data sets. those numbers are more consistent to what we'd expect and they reflect what the reality is much better.</p>
<p>Your list is not helpful. It does not reflect well-reasoned assumptions that would produce a truly meaningful, valid result.</p>
<p>Undergraduate focus is at best a nebulous, subjective phrase. Its meaning is not only different from person to person, but its importance may be as well. Some might consider its importance only in relationship to a specific school or academic department context and not necessarily to be compared against a list of other schools.</p>
<p>In my own thinking, Ive never considered that undergraduate focus could be arbitrarily measured by looking at those two parameters you mention: (1) the percent of undergraduate degrees awarded and (2) the percent of undergraduate enrollment. When you suggest that undergraduate focus is not completely quantifiable, I wonder why you think that a varying, abstract notion might be quantifiable at all, although I agree there are some factors (that you do not bring out in your OP) that can be applied. Factors I might look at include instructor/student ratio; percentage of classes under 20 students; percentage of classes taught by professors (vs. teaching assistants); graduation rates; etc. As well, there are of course the intangible factors, such as access to professors and opportunities for undergraduate research. </p>
<p>Your rationale that larger numbers of graduate students distract faculty from undergrads is an unfounded and dubious assertion. If your argument begins with a false platform, the entirety of your argument is invalid. What evidence is there to prove that any optimum balance exists at all, vis-à-vis undergraduate/graduate ratios? And if there is an optimum balance, and that might be in the 50-75% range, does that not run counter to your premise/rationale? Arent you trying to argue that undergraduate focus is improved by a higher percentage of undergraduates? How can the low end of your range (50%) be acceptable to your argument, much less optimum? </p>
<p>My daughter attends Emory University, and its undergraduate enrollment is in the range of 52-55% of the graduate enrollment. All of her classes are taught by professors, not TAs. She has as much access as she can fit into her schedule to meet with each professor. Her largest class is 60 people (Microeconomics). Her smallest class is 9 students. She has had opportunities to work in research labs with professors already, and shes only a sophomore. Further, I have seen incredible undergraduate research projects exploring complex subject matter done by undergraduates who took advantage of the opportunities presented by a national university that has placed a strong focus on the undergraduate liberal arts tradition. Your percentages mean nothing when any school must stand on its own merits to actually deliver the undergraduate focus with meaning and impact. How valuable is it to tout the undergraduate focus of a school whose 4-year graduation rate is in the 45-55% range when compared against schools on your list that can state grad rates of 80-90%?</p>
<p>There are always trade-offs in life, but wouldnt it make sense that if undergraduate focus is of utmost importance, that a prospective student should simply forgo application to a national university and instead apply only to liberal arts colleges with no graduate programs to "distract" their focus?</p>