until attending a research university for grad school myself. Most people I talked to had little to no knowledge of what goes in to academic research or what constitutes as legitimate graduate research at the university level. My program has me performing MRI's and EEG's almost daily on research subjects and doing some pretty intensive neuroimaging analysis.

That said, I don't think BYU get's enough credit for how well BYU's undergrad programs prepare students for graduate research. My mass comms program had us doing some really cool research (like graduate level research) with eye tracking technology. Our class even got to put a paper together and present it at an academic conference. How awesome is that? I also think research numbers in terms of dollars are heavily inflated at state schools and other research schools in the pac 12. Wayyy too much money is dumped into research that gets wasted IMO. BYU has different funding sources but does pretty well with what they do receive. I've worked with BYU grad students on research and have familiarized myself with their programs and it seems on par with many other research universities.

Just lots of confusion in the world regarding this subject.