A study shows that BYU has become the fifth-most popular university in the U.S. for students going on to earn doctorate degrees.
According to research by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, BYU is ranked No. 10 if the last 10 years are taken into account. However, if only the last five years are taken, BYU is No. 5.
“We are pleased with this ranking as it provides evidence that we are succeeding in our mission to provide students with an excellent undergraduate education that is both intellectually enlarging and spiritually strengthening,” said Brent Webb, BYU’s academic vice president. “We believe BYU is successful in preparing students for graduate school because of our strong emphasis on providing a first-rate undergraduate education.”
Webb explained what puts BYU a step ahead in undergraduate education.
“While we are very pleased with the quality of our classroom instruction, the student experience at BYU is also enhanced significantly by undergraduate mentoring, which allows undergraduate students to conduct significant research alongside faculty,” he said. “The mentoring experience at BYU is great preparation for both graduate-level education as well as lifelong learning.”
Undergraduate mentoring is when a student and a professor work together on research. BYU students often work together with professors, with recent examples such as a circuit launched into space aboard the space shuttle Endeavour. These experiences provide valuable work-related learning for students, and can even help them excel in fields they love but have difficulty with.
Daniel Mortensen, recently accepted to the doctorate of chemistry program at UC Berkeley, experienced this firsthand. He said he originally struggled with chemistry classes at BYU, finding them “pretty tough” and “discouraging to a lot of people, myself included.”
But mentoring made the big difference for Mortensen.
“The one-on-one discussions with professors and actual lab work helped me figure out how things work and what I wanted,” Mortensen said.
Professors in the chemistry department enc0urage mentoring, making it widely available to chemistry students.
“Nearly all of the undergrads in our department get research experience,” said Professor David Dearden, who worked with Mortensen. “If they don’t, it’s their choice.”
The two worked together on a project involving breaking different atoms off a pumpkin-shaped molecule they constructed. The differing amounts of force required to break the molecules off told them a lot about how to build molecule-sized machines. The results of their study were published in the journal Chemical Communications.
“Perhaps someday they’ll be able to make machines that you can inject into the bloodstream to clear out arterial plaque,” Dearden said.
