How good is vandy's physics/chemistry department?

fallenchemist
Sun, 19 May 2013 11:55:05 +0000

Both schools are going to have great profs doing super interesting research. That is not going to help you decide.



I am also accepted by U Michigan-Ann Arbor, which seems to have better rankings in phy/chem.

As an undergraduate this is completely irrelevant to you. Also your assumption that size matters is erroneous. I mean it might matter to the ranking system, which has innumerable flaws, but it doesn’t really matter to the quality of the research going on, once you pass a certain critical mass which Vandy easily has. Besides, you can only work for one professor in doing research, so it doesn’t really make a difference if there are 25 professors or 75, if there is one that is doing research that fascinates you.



If I want to have a phD in a major research institute like MIT or Caltech, which undergraduate school would fit me better?

That is actually the key point in your post, the fact that you want to go on to get a Ph.D. at a top 10 grad school in a physical science. Just to let you know, I attended such an institution after getting my undergrad at Tulane, and while it (Tulane) was a wonderful place to go to school and get my undergrad in chemistry, it obviously doesn’t even come close to being a highly ranked grad school in chemistry. Yet I was able to do some really interesting research and have two publications in the top American Chemical Society Journals and present my results at the national meeting of the same. Since that time some 30 years ago, those papers have been cited over 300 times, and actually been referenced in a couple of textbooks on both spectroscopy and inorganic chemistry.

I go into this in such detail not to brag (well, maybe a little lol) but to point out that where you go to school undergrad doesn’t make much difference in where you get accepted to grad school and what you can accomplish as an undergrad. What matters much more is where you feel you can be happiest as an undergrad overall, not just in the classroom and not just in your subject area, and then also taking into account where you can do some research that appeals to you. If you have some insight into what you would like to focus on for research, then look into what areas the faculty at both schools are exploring. Surely there should be at least one prof at each school, and probably more, that is doing work you could really get into. Pick them out, and write to each one to see if they would be open to you doing research in their labs as an undergrad. Perhaps their responses will help make the decision easier.

While I wouldn’t say that should be the only factor, given that you are going to be there only two years it probably should be given more weight than if you were going in as a freshman. That’s MHO, what do you think?