Auburn University embraces what they call “Engaged Active Student Learning”, an approach to teaching in which students do not expect their professors to lecture for the duration of class; students are put into clusters and come prepared to tackle assignments either individually, but often with their peers to foster team working skills. 

Auburn has ranked in the top 50 public universities in America for 20 consecutive years (US News & World Report) and among its 130 degree programmes provided for undergraduates and postgraduates are excellent degrees in agriculture, construction and manufacturing. Students from Auburn’s College of Sciences and Mathematics are also consistently more likely to be accepted into medical school at a rate that is 30% higher than the national average.

Auburn’s campus is in the small town of Auburn, Alabama and the campus is a total size of 1,875 acres, with a Tiger Transit shuttle bus that is free of charge to Auburn students. 

Onsite is a 13.5 acre nature preserve, a 240,000 square-foot Recreation and Wellness Centre, 1/3-mile indoor track, rock climbing walls, and 206 academic buildings tailored towards student experience. 

The various library locations are available for students around the clock, with the Ralph Brown Draughon Library open 24 hours a day for the night owls of Auburn. The libraries contain over 3.2 million volumes and 2.6 million government documents, and access to over 227 e-databases with over 10 million archival and manuscript items.

Launch Innovation Grants Programme is a good way for students with innovations that they believe can make big differences to get closer to commercialisation. The programme has provided 17 awards thus far totalling over $650,000, and while some are still ongoing, six have proven successful enough to go to market by way of licensing deals or follow-on funding.  

Successful startups backed by Auburn include CytoViva, a company that produces award-winning microscopes at incredible resolutions, Petram Technologies, a company that provides more environmentally-friendly ways to blast without the use of dynamite or fracking, and XO Armor, a lightweight exercise garment for athletes.

As one of America’s few land, sea, and space grant institutions, Auburn receives federal funding for these endeavours allowing for academics and students alike to pursue research within many fields. Its land grant and location make studies into agricultural research, life sciences, and engineering incredibly viable. 

Recent research areas that Auburn has applied themselves to include storage of nuclear waste for recycling, and cyber operations research has been a recent focus. The Auburn Research and Technology Foundation (ARTF) and the Auburn Research Park have blended research aspects with the business community and have actually provided plenty of jobs and opportunities to students and graduates of Auburn.

One way in which Auburn University gets its students job ready is by incentivising co-op programmes, allowing students to get paid work experience in tandem with classroom study. This way, students can get the best of both worlds and show employers that they have the skills that they’re looking for in graduates. 

The Harbert College of Business, in particular, boasts strong statistics for its graduates, with 70% of their graduates participating in internships, and the average starting salary of a Harbert graduate being $54,600. 

Handshake is also a valuable university tool in which students can create an account through the university where they can browse part-time jobs, internships, co-ops, and full-time positions. They can sign up for interviews and see which employers will be visiting campus soon.

There is plenty to offer students at Auburn; with such a mild climate, outdoor activities are enormously popular, with sports being a large part of Auburn life. The University Programme Council also organises over 100 special events each year, including football tailgates, live music, festivals, and more. There are even theatrical performances put on for the students by the theatre and music programmes. 

Auburn is well-situated in that it has Chewacla State Park only a few miles away where you can enjoy 696 acres of hiking and camping. It is also around a 2 hour drive from Atlanta and Birmingham, and even a 3 hour drive from the beautiful Gulf Coast beaches.

There’s a lot to admire about the relaxed, small-town atmosphere of Auburn University; it’s linked tightly with local industry, particularly in agriculture, engineering, and life sciences so students intrigued in those fields will find great opportunities here, whether that be in a research sense or job-seeking sense. 

Students seeking more variety in their options in regards to academia, research, or business support may find Auburn to be an odd fit but the alumni of Auburn speak for themselves in their successes and there’s no reason to think any student couldn’t turn the resources on offer to them here into gold.