<p>As for the whole “undergraduate focus” of Miami, I agree that it’s true. How could it not be at a school that has little graduate or research program. It’s the main reason that I considered going to Miami until I put it into context. However…</p>
<p>what I’ve found at Ohio State is that it takes a little performance and effort on one’s part to make an impression on the faculty, but when one does the resources and quality of faculty that are available blow Miami out of the water. For instance…</p>
<p>There are no National of Academy of Sciences or National of Academy of Engineering members on Miami’s faculty. In fact there’s only one (an Engineering Academy member at Cincinnati) on the faculty of any public university other than Ohio State. There are 23 on faculty at Ohio State, plus 127 elected members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which is the pool from which future National Academy members are drawn.</p>
<p>Anectdotal evidence: the professor who taught my introductory chemistry class is named Malcolm Chisolm (not a household name I grant you). He is, however, both a member of the American National Academy of Sciences and the British Royal Academy of Sciences (you know other members have included Newton, Darwin and Hawking). He’s on the short list the last several years for the Nobel in Chemistry. Every year that he’s been at Ohio State, he’s taught an introductory chemistry class. Would I have been exposed to that at Miami?</p>
<p>Guggenheim Fellows…beyond the very rare awards (Nobels, Fields Medals, Macaurthur Foundation Grants) this is the biggie for the arts, sciences, humanities and social sciences. Ohio State has had 32 in the last quarter century. That’s more than every public and private university in Ohio combined. For comparison’s sake, Miami and OhioU. have combined for 5.</p>
<p>My own field of Chinese. Ohio State is one of the few universities in the country that has multiple area studies programs designated as Comprehensive National Resource Centers by the Department of Education (Title VI) generally the top 10-15 programs in the nation: the East Asian Studies Center, the Slavic and East European Studies Center and the Middle Eastern Studies Center.</p>
<p>Granted all of these faculty have to balance undergraduate education, graduate students and research, but they are of a level that Miami could only dream of.</p>
<p>My own personal experience is that I’ve been invited to take part in a graduate level reading seminar with a political science professor named by Foreign Policy magazine as the third most influential scholar of international affairs in the world. Yes, I had to prove myself to get this opportunity but had I gone to Miami no amount of proving myself would have been adequate for his type does not exist in Oxford.</p>