Undergraduate Chemistry/Biochemistry

js416256
Tue, 19 Jun 2007 18:05:22 +0000

To westcoastlove, in response to your comment “I am not sure if ALL ives are good for undergrad Chem. For one, Brown is not so good.” I feel that is definitely off. I feel like Brown’s undergrad chem program offers all the key components to a “great undergrad chemistry department”. With very few grad students professors rely on undergraduates to aid in their research and professors can focus more on undergrads giving undergrads a much better chem education.

When you say Stanford or Harvard is a good school for chem, you are basing this claim on the strengths of the graduate schools (i.e. research grants, publications, etc.) and while the strength of a grad school might be important for a grad student it shouldn’t matter to an undergrad. In fact, I believe that these schools with prestigious graduate schools will offer less to an undergraduate chemistry student because the profs will be more graduate focused meaning that students will have less support in their studies, research positions will be more menial and scarce, and frankly the students don’t get the education they deserve.

I think at Ivies like Princeton, Brown, and Dartmouth, you can really get a good undergrad chem program that can prove invaluable when it is time to apply for med school or grad school because of the close faculty/student interaction.

Just my 2 cents…