Why Study Biology at Tufts?

Tufts has excellent support for technology, including central computer facilities and support, high speed network access throughout the buildings and dedicated computers, scanners, and printers for graduate student use. The main library provides online access to a huge collection of biological journals and databases. The university owns and supports research-focused software, and the libraries of many other Boston area universities and teaching hospitals are accessible to our students. 

The Boston area is noted for its rich intellectual life, and especially for the high concentration of universities, colleges, medical schools, teaching hospitals, research institutions, and other scientific and technological enterprises. Students have nearly unlimited opportunities to tap into these diverse resources as they pursue programs of study in biology. The Tufts University collaborative community alone includes separate schools of biomedical sciences, nutrition, medicine, veterinary medicine, and dental medicine. Other Tufts resources include the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and the Department of Urban and Environmental Policy.

Graduate students in biology may take courses for credit at any of these Tufts divisions and also at other universities in our graduate school consortium (Boston College, Brandeis University, Boston University).

The department holds regular seminars presented by invited scientists to keep students and faculty abreast of exciting research going on in the biological sciences. Students may take advantage of similar seminars at the many research institutions in the Boston area, for which notices are posted regularly. In addition to invited speakers, departmental faculty and postdoctoral fellows present research seminars.

The Tufts Biology Department is located in a residential area with many restaurants and great access to the Boston subway and bus system. Many students share houses within walking or biking distance to the Tufts campus. Students especially enjoy the restaurants, shopping and nightlife of Davis, Porter, and Harvard Squares. Downtown Boston with all its offerings is a short 20-30 min ride away on the T. 

We are surrounded by other institutions and companies also engaged in cutting-edge biological research, and our students benefit from interactions and collaborations with their scientists through local meetings and discussion groups. Due to a large number of universities and start-up companies, Boston has one of the highest proportions of young adults of any major US city, with more than a third of the population between the ages of 24-30.