When you take your role as an academic scholar seriously, whether it’s as a student or a faculty member, the college you decide to attend or work at is not something chosen randomly. Yes, you ultimately have to go with the one that accepts you, but as you narrow down your preferred institutions to apply to, there are some factors to consider that will help you make the crucial decision of where to send your applications.

Choosing a college with comparable values as yours is the surest way to a satisfactory career or education during your time there. For instance, researchers who end up at a college that puts all its budget and focus on their sports team are not going to be happy with the budget they are allocated and the equipment they have to work with. Instead, researchers should check into the financial situation of the college before the decide to apply and look for those that have the highest research and development expenditures within their budget.

The Important Role of Researchers

Society has come a long way just in the past few decades in terms of research and development of technology. Now, the innovations researchers have been able to unearth have helped billions of people live healthier, happier lives, fight once deadly diseases with successful treatments, and recognize, fix, and prevent global problems like pollution and climate change.

None of this would have been possible without the hard work of researchers, diligently focusing on a problem and attempting to experiment with multiple potential solutions until a positive outcome was reached. Scientists in every field of science, both hard and soft, are able to find answers to once unknown questions, fill in gaps where they exist in order to better our knowledge of certain topics, and evolve and adapt the way industries work in order to make their processes more efficient, productive, and economical.

Researchers diagnose diseases and other health conditions, find potential treatments to prevent, cure, or manage them, increase survival rates, improve the quality of life in global populations, and continually strive to better society in general. This is not an inexpensive endeavor, however, and scholars who work in institutions and industries with deeper pockets typically are able to delve into more complex research.

What’s Included in Research and Development Budgets?

The terms “research” and “development” are so intricately intertwined anymore that, in most cases, they are included together in a budget. Known colloquially as R&D expenses, these costs are direct expenditures that fall in line with anything an institution or company does with the goal of developing, designing or enhancing its knowledge. This might be included as the creation, development, or enhancement of a product, a service, new or existing technologies, or even the way certain processes are established in order to make them more efficient or set a precedent a certain way.

Most R&D expenditures are found in areas such as healthcare, pharmaceutical industries, technology innovations, and general industries. You’ll find that, although the term is vague, your institution will likely micromanage what’s included in your R&D budget because they can receive an IRS tax break or use them as deductions for their corporation.

The Top 4 Colleges With R&D Expenditures

Because of all of the expenses that are necessary with the research itself, not to mention the development of the products, services, or other outcomes, a serious researcher wants to work at the top colleges where R&D is taken seriously. Some of these institutions include:

1. Harvard University, where undergraduates, graduates, and professionals can obtain a solid education including research programs in many fields. Art, science, medicine, and public health are top focuses at Harvard, and there are individual schools within the institution geared towards offering the cream of the crop education with a high R&D budget.
2. Johns Hopkins University, located in Baltimore, Maryland, the college that established the Johns Hopkins Hospital. Because of the connection to such an advanced medical center, researchers who go to school or work here have access to state-of-the-art equipment and real-time case studies.
3. University of Michigan, one of the few schools that offer cutting-edge courses in fields like aerospace engineering, chemistry, biology, and other high-impact subjects. As its graduation populations rank within the top 5% of the entire country, this school has a high R&D budget so its students can easily stand out among the global competition.
4. Yale University, one of the top echelons, a long-standing institution in which the funders know they have to live up to their name and therefore offer researchers a large R&D budget. Courses include the most innovative and up-to-date studies in environmental engineering, public health, law, medicine, and more.

As a researcher, working with or attending these four schools will get your foot in the door anywhere in the world. However, that means they’re also difficult to be accepted in, so you can start doing your part early to ensure you, too, stand out from the crowd!