Are there any affordable US Universities for International (Canadian) graduate students?

Do professors in universities devoted to undergraduate education also often tend to be nicer to their graduate students?

• They generally seem to have fewer graduate students (which is why they can focus on their undergrads), but does that mean that they often treat their (fewer) graduate students more nicely? That's basically what I heard when I visited both Yale and Brown (and from what I heard about from Princeton PhD students too)

• Answer:

  Good teachers are good teachers. Someone who devotes a lot of time into thinking about how undergrads are taught has probably put in a lot of time thinking about how graduate students are taught. In addition, someone who recognizes the difficulty of certain concepts, understands that it takes time and patience to learn difficult concepts. See http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3oijmx/ However, this doesn't mean that they are necessarily nicer (I know some great teachers who are harsh on their students). Some Professors also recognize that difficult subjects can only be masted by lots and lots of hard work. Laziness is rarely rewarded and shouldn't be tolerated. The only situation where this becomes a problem is when the graduate student is also TAing the course. Typically, the Professor will expect that the graduate student places the same emphasis on teaching WHILE producing quality work during his actual "day" job. Note that this is very different from someone who puts a lot of effort into teaching but is still a bad teacher. That is just a lose-lose scenario.