<p>Best programs for undergrad botany for top student who once collected succulents for the fun of it?</p>
<p>Swarthmore Bio is pretty good in my son’s view (he is attending). Here is the Howard Hughes Institute’s take on Science at Swarthmore:
<a href=“News & Stories | HHMI”>News & Stories | HHMI; </p>
<p>It mentions the Bio department. Don’t know specifically about Botany. But the Plant and organismal Bio course is well received.</p>
<p>Most of the large state universities have good programs - in the midwest I know of U of Wisconsin-Madison, U of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, Purdue, U of Missouri and U of Kansas. Look under horticulture, agriculture, plant biology, environmental studies, and landscape for more ideas - it’s a large and diverse field.
Your son or daughter might enjoy this website:
<a href=“http://www.nmnh.si.edu/botany/[/url]”>http://www.nmnh.si.edu/botany/</a>
check out the articles in “Plant Press”</p>
<p>According to an old ranking:</p>
<h1>1 University of California-Davis</h1>
<h1>2 Cornell University</h1>
<h1>3 University of Wisconsin-Madison</h1>
<h1>4 University of Texas-Austin</h1>
<h1>5 University of Michigan-Ann Arbor</h1>
<h1>6 Duke University</h1>
<h1>7 University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign</h1>
<h1>8 Michigan State University-East Lansing</h1>
<h1>9 University of California-Riverside</h1>
<h1>10 North Carolina State University-Raleigh</h1>
<h1>11 Pennsylvania State University-University Park</h1>
<h1>12 Indiana University-Bloomington</h1>
<h1>13 University of Minnesota-Minneapolis</h1>
<h1>14 University of Georgia</h1>
<h1>15 University of Washington-Seattle</h1>
<h1>16 Purdue University-West Lafayette</h1>
<h1>17 Washington University-Saint Louis</h1>
<h1>18 Iowa State University</h1>
<h1>19 Ohio State University</h1>
<h1>20 University of Kentucky</h1>
<p>Adding to Alexandre’s list - other schools with strong botony/plant science programs:
Connecticut College
Miami U (Ohio)
U of Florida
UC Berkeley
U of Maryland College Park
Ohio Wesleyan
U of Tennessee
Humboldt State (Calif)
U of Alabama
U of Delaware
Oregon State
U of Hawaii
U of Wyoming
Colorado State</p>
<p>Additionally, many schools with strong biology departments will have botany programs within them. Swarthmore has already been mentioned; another example is St. Olaf in Minnesota.</p>
<p>Finally, he may also want to look at environmental science as a possibility for a major — many programs focus on preserving natural plant habitats, etc.
Schools with strong environmental science programs include: Middlebury, College of the Atlantic, Bowdoin, Brown, UCSB, Denison, U Penn, Macalester, Bates, etc.</p>
<p>I cosign Alexandre’s list… Michigan State’s is one of the oldest and most prestigious the land … it’s Beal Botanical Garden is the oldest college botanical garden in the US… Surprised Harvard’s not on the list (they may not have a per se major, but they’ve got to teach it)… Asa Gray, at Harvard in the mid 1800s, trained many of the world’s pioneering botanists.</p>
<p>I really enjoy botany, but I’m concerned about limiting the biology to botany. Other posters have suggest some environmental and bio programs, let me suggest that a strong overall bio program that encourages/requires a thesis (Bard, Reed, Haverford, etc.) would allow a student to explore that interest in depth without sacrificing options.</p>
<p>You might want to look at Rutgers University- Cook College. They have a list of possible majors that may interest you.</p>
<p>Actually, many schools have already made the choice for you by incorporating the biology of plants into a field called “Environmental Biology” or just simply ‘Biological Sciences.’ These schools often no longer have a major called “Botany”.</p>
<p>Check out Cornell University’s agriculture school.</p>