Did You Sit In on Classes Before Making a College Choice?

Sally_Rubenstone · 10-24-2009, 12:31 PM

Current (or recent) college students ...

When you were back in high school and making your college list (or final decisions), did you sit in on any classes at one or more of the colleges you visited?

If so, how did this experience influence your final college choice?

If you did sit in on classes at the school you ultimately chose, do you feel that your pre-frosh class experience was a good indicator of what you found once you'd actually matriculated?

TwistedxKiss · 10-24-2009, 02:04 PM

Nope. I feel like that would have been a great way to mislead me. Even the worst schools have some great professors, and even the best schools have some god awful ones.

llpitch · 10-24-2009, 02:08 PM

I only visited two colleges for their admit weekends (Yale and Stanford). They did have some classes but most of them were the fake classes schools put on for admit weekends. I did manage to catch a real music theory class at Stanford, but I'm not interested in music theory (it was the only class I could make it to so I went anyway). And no, the pre-frosh experience was nothing like the classes I'm taking now obviously (math, cs, econ, humanities).

romanigypsyeyes · 10-24-2009, 02:39 PM

I sat in on my two top choice colleges, multiple times with multiple classes and different professors. It did not make or break my decision but it did influence my decision about which school to attend.

Sally_Rubenstone · 10-24-2009, 03:19 PM

Thanks for all the answers so far.

romanigypsyeyes ... how did sitting in on the classes most influence your choice?

romanigypsyeyes · 10-24-2009, 03:36 PM

Well, for one I discovered that at school A, there tended to be many more TAs teaching the classes and less professors that spoke adequate English and in school B there were generally smaller classes taught by actual professors. The teachers at school B also seemed to be much more engaged with their students and more discussion based rather than school A which was more lecture-based rather than trying to teach to the crowd kind of thing.

Like I said, it didn't make or break my decision because I knew that I could have just gotten bad profs/bad classes at one school and happened to get the good profs/good classes at the other, but it did make me think that it might be a trend throughout each school. So far (at least in my experience) the trend is staying constant with the profs I have here at school B and from what my friends have told me at school A, they are having similar experiences to what I had with my visits.

I hope that made sense.

Sally_Rubenstone · 10-24-2009, 03:43 PM

Makes perfect sense.

Again, thanks.

lolcats4 · 10-24-2009, 06:23 PM

I'd say it had a bit of an impact, but not a huge one. At Ivy League School A, one of the classes I sat in on was their core curriculum's trademark class which all sophomores were required to take (ok that probably made it kind of obvious) and I wasn't impressed with the general apathy of the students (sleeping, texting) or the lecture format (probably caused in part by this apathy). The other classes weren't particularly exciting.

At the school I currently attend, in the classes I sat in on the students were far more actively engaged in the material. There was more back-and-forth with the professor (from the 50 person lecture to the 9 person seminar) and the students seemed a lot more awake and responsive.

To me, the difference was one of the reasons why I wanted to go to a smaller LAC and helped to confirm my choice.

Jimgotkp · 10-25-2009, 12:42 AM

Nah. just toured the school around and fell in love with Purdue the moment I stepped out of my car.

b@r!um · 10-25-2009, 09:58 AM

Retrospectively, it might make sense to sit in on classes for applicants whose prospective major department is small. If a department only has 3 or 4 professors, you want to be sure that you like at least some of them or you might regret your college choice later on. I am mentioning that because I have several friends who have had a bad experience in that regard.

Sally_Rubenstone · 10-25-2009, 10:37 AM

Quote:

it might make sense to sit in on classes for applicants whose prospective major department is small.

That's good advice! I have sometimes wondered if the sit-in-on-classes approach to evaluating colleges is too random. As TwistedxKiss has noted, "Even the worst schools have some great professors, and even the best schools have some god awful ones."

But when you're looking at a small major, it's likely indeed that you will encounter all the profs, some of them many times over, and it might be worth a close look before you leap.

Also, if you're interested in an area in which you already have some background, sitting in on classes can be a decent way to assess where you would fit in and if the classes will be sufficiently rigorous and interesting. For example, I have a friend whose son wanted to study engineering. He visited one of his "Safety" schools, and he liked it a lot. But then, when he sat in on the engineering classes, he felt that the profs were covering material that he'd already learned in high school. A closer look at this school's engineering curriculum confirmed his concern that it wouldn't be rigorous enough to really challenge him.

Likewise, a student with a strong background in any field might want to check out not the intro classes but the middle-level ones at target colleges to see if they do seem sufficiently new and demanding.

rodney · 10-25-2009, 10:42 AM

I would imagine that it would be beneficial for a prospective student to sit in on classes if they were unsure whether they wanted a large or small school....high school students have no concept what it's like to sit in a huge lecture hall with 500 others, even if there are smaller break-out sections for discussion....

at the same time, sitting in on a small discussion based class may create discomfort for those who want to "melt into the woodwork".....

Good to know at any point during the admission process....

Techy233 · 10-25-2009, 09:52 PM

It's great for ambitious freshmen. I did it, it was great. Took Differential Equations at NYU, and now here for engineering. {Granted, took the course at CAS, realised I wanted to do engineering, and last-minute applied to Poly. I do take Power & Politics at CAS right now, however.}

ZFanatic · 10-26-2009, 01:50 AM

I did, but it didn't affect my decision at all. I sat in a chem lecture at McGill, and thought it was like I expected. Sat in a nanotech lecture here at Cornell and wanted to gouge my eyes out.

I'm at Cornell now. My decision was in no way influenced by one class... That's just kind of lame.

HighlandMom · 10-26-2009, 08:44 AM

My d is just now finalizing her list, but she's sat in on classes at her top two colleges. The best thing she learned (both very small LACs) was how the students are in class as well as after class - do they rush off or linger for further discussion with the prof etc. Granted as others have said, one class won't give you all the facts but it does give you a flavor of the school.