<p>I mostly agree with Mini.</p>
<p>I would also add the following observation. The schools where the tour guides talk the most about not “being taught by TAs” seem to be the schools where TAs are the most prevalent!</p>
<p>This is clearly an hot-button issue in admissions and the schools are very much on the defensive.</p>
<p>A related issue is the lack of information about the number of professors in a university actually teaching undergrad courses. As far as I can tell, the Common Data Set information on student/faculty ratios includes all professors, including those who never teach an undergrad class or never teach a class at all.</p>
<p>Where I disagree with Mini: I think that looking at the actual focus on undergrad teaching is one of the more important considerations when selecting an undergrad school. There are several components to undergrad focus: Who teaches the classes? Is teaching a significant part of the tenure evaluation? What are the real-world class sizes of a real-world student? And so on and so forth.</p>