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Good question. It comes down to four things:
- Quality -- excellent education
- Research -- leading the leaders
- Value -- great bargain
- Location -- perfectly placed
Quality -- excellent education
As Alaska's top teaching and research university and the state's only Ph.D.-granting institutions, our programs attract -- and retain -- world-class faculty. You'll find them quoted in popular magazines like Time and Newsweek as well as published in professional journals.
Our full-time faculty of about 600 teaches most classes, even introductory courses, which means you are able to start building relationships with professors from your very first semester here. And because class sizes are small, you won't be just a face in the crowd. Faculty members here know their students.
UAF was named a 2006 “Best in the West” school by the Princeton Review, a designation no other school in the state achieved.
Research -- leading the leaders
If it's about the North, chances are it's taught right here. UAF is Alaska's research university and a world leader in arctic research. In fact, UAF was recently listed among the top five small research institutes in the country. With more than a dozen research centers on the main campus and other locations, and $120 million in annual research funding, UAF is the research engine of Alaska.
UAF's location in the heart of Alaska makes it ideally situated to conduct research on everything circumpolar. Research focuses on understanding the challenges and opportunities of the North -- studies on global climate change, avian flu and cold climate engineering, among other topics, place UAF at the forefront of international arctic research.
Undergraduate and graduate students get one-on-one time with faculty, and even collaborate on research. Field work is really in the field, or in the river, on the glacier or up the mountain.
As part of the International Polar Year (March 2007-March 2009), UAF is a major center for myriad research programs related to the Arctic, especially global climate change. UAF is also host to the University of the Arctic, a cooperative project with universities from around the circumpolar North.
A great education and outstanding research opportunities don't mean much if they aren't affordable. For an education this good, you'd expect a higher price tag, but UAF students pay one of the lowest tuition rates in the country. And UAF offers a full range of financial aid resources to help pay for your education.
To its people, there's no better home than Alaska. Our location defines us: what we are, what we teach, what we research. As America's arctic university we learn and teach in a classroom and laboratory that encompass more than 360 million acres.
Located in the heart of Alaska, surrounded by wilderness areas and just two hours from Denali National Park, Fairbanks is the perfect starting point for exploring the wilderness of Alaska. Surrounded by vast expanses of forest, crystalline streams and mighty rivers, the state's second-largest city maintains the friendliness of a small town while offering the services of a larger city.
There's more to UAF than just Fairbanks. With its network of community campuses, UAF reaches far beyond Interior Alaska to give students the education they want and need where they live and work.