Fordham or Emory for research opportunities: which school is better for undergraduates?

For undergraduate research access, Emory usually has the clearer edge. It has a stronger overall research infrastructure, a major medical and public health ecosystem attached to the university, and a campus culture where undergrads commonly work in labs, clinical research settings, and faculty projects across disciplines. If your priority is finding a place where research is built into the university’s identity and there are many different pathways into it, Emory tends to offer more depth.

Emory is especially attractive for students interested in biology, neuroscience, psychology, chemistry, public health, or anything connected to medicine. The presence of Emory’s hospitals, medical school, and the CDC nearby creates a wider range of possibilities than most universities can offer, including clinical, translational, and policy-related research. In practice, that often means more labs, more faculty doing active research, and more ways for undergrads to plug in early if they are proactive.

Fordham can still work well, especially for a student who wants a more undergraduate-centered environment and is willing to build opportunities through relationships. At Fordham, research is available, but it is less likely to feel like the defining feature of the school. It can be a good fit for students in the humanities, social sciences, and some sciences who want close faculty mentorship and are comfortable seeking out projects more individually rather than stepping into a large research ecosystem.

Fordham’s New York location can also help students connect classroom interests to archives, nonprofits, policy organizations, hospitals, and cultural institutions, which matters if you think of research broadly and not only as lab work. But if you mean traditional university-based undergraduate research with lots of established labs and a particularly strong pipeline into health-related or science research, Emory is the more compelling option.

So the real distinction is this: Emory is better for the student who wants research to be a central, visible part of college from early on, while Fordham suits someone who values faculty access and city-based opportunities and does not need the same scale of research infrastructure.