annasdad

> particularly in the larger and more popular majors

Like English and psychology (the OP's potential majors) for example?

Sam Lee

Yes and the trade-off is even worse at big state universities because of the sheer numbers.

At NU, there are 250 English majors. It's not small but not scarily large either. In contrast, Michigan conferred 346 bachelor degrees in English in 2011 which translates to approximately 1,000 (346 x 3, assuming no the freshmen class has no English major) English majors in any given year (the number for psychology is ~1,600!).

rjkofnovi

You don't declare you major until your junior year Sam. Doubling that number would be more accurate.

Alexandre

Sam Lee, Michigan is not a typical public university where resources are concerned. When you factor in state appropriations, Michigan has the private university equivallent of ~$300,000/student, and that does not factor in the benefits of economies of scale that a university of Michigan's size and complexity enjoys. Very few universities, pricate or public, have significantly more resources than Michigan, either in the absolute or in the relative sense.

On average, Michigan will have 3 times the number or Psychology majors that Northwestern has (according to the Northwestern CDS, 9% of Northwestern students major in Psychology)...but it will also have more than 3 times more professors. For example, Northwestern's Psychology faculty has 37 professors while Michigan's Psychology faculty has over 120 professors.

Similarly, Northwestern's English faculty has 57 professors while Michigan's has over 120.

Directory — Faculty : University of Michigan PSYCHOLOGY DEPARTMENT

Psychology Faculty | Department of Psychology, Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, Northwestern University

U-M Department of English: People: Faculty: Directory

Faculty - People - English Department - Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences: Northwestern University

Again, I definitely think the OP should transfer to Northwestern as the university seems to be a better fit, but he should manage his expectations.

Sam Lee

rjkofnovi ,

At NU, students declare majors by the end of sophomore year. But even if what you wrote applies to UM, you have to factor the fact that not everyone graduates in four years. So multiplying by two is going to understate the number, perhaps fairly significantly. Regardless, I actually just found the actual numbers for direct comparison (see below).

Alexandre,
In 2011, NU conferred 70 degrees in English and 141 degrees in Psychology. So it's more like 4 times (5 for English) instead of 3.

Alexandre

Sam Lee, Michigan's faculty is also much larger than NU's. As the links above show, Michigan's Psychology faculty is more than 3 times larger than NU's while its English faculty is more than twice larger.

Haystack

I was in a popular major at NU. The majority of classes in my major had over 100 students. Pretty much all of my Gen eds were 100 + also. If you want the majority of your classes to be discussion based and small, I would never recommend NU(or any research university).

Sam Lee

Haystack,
According to 09-10 common data set, 45 of the 1882 class sections had over 100+ students. Yet, the majority of your 45 courses required for graduation had over 100 students?? Your story just doesn't seem to add up.

Haystack

Just off the top of my head...large lecture clases I took at NU (maybe I should have said 75+). This was a few years ago so I can't remember everything, I do know that none of these were in any way discussion based.

Am Gov and Politics
US History I
Us History II
Intro to Intl Relations
Canadian Politics
Law and the Political Arena
Macro
Micro
Human Geography
Highlights of Astronomy
North American geography
History of Philosophy
Intro to Am Lit
Public Finance
Intro to Urban Politics
New Testament
Legislative Process

I am sure that I am missing some. It only took about 2 minutes to come up with 17/45 courses. I'll bet if I looked at my transcript I could come up with another 8 or so large lecture classes.

Sam Lee

Alexandre,

Just because it got 3 times more faculty doesn't mean it offers three times more courses, which is what you seem to implicitly assume. In fact, according to common data set, UM offers 2 times more courses in the fall *semester* than NU in the fall *quarter*. The factor is less than 2 once you consider that NU has three quarters. This explains partially the following difference: at NU, 40% of the classes have less than 10 students and 2.3% of them have greater than 100 students; at UM, 15% of the class have less than 10 students and 6.8% of them have greater than 100 students.

The point is while NU (and its private peers) is no LAC, it's also not the same as big state U.

Sam Lee

Haystack,

40% of the classes have less than 10 students; so apparently, you just didn't take advantage of that probably because of your particular major. But I wouldn't let your experience to generalize.

Alexandre

Sam Lee, I have learned not to take class size statistics too seriously. They can be awefully misleading. They certainly do not apply to students in popular majors such as Economics, Political Science or Psychology. The way a university reports class size and the way it develops its curriculum play a large role in determining those statistics. This has been made very clear to me when Cal and JHU almost magically changed their class size composition from ~50% (classes with fewer than 20) / ~20% (classes with more than 50) mix to ~65% / ~15% in just one or two years.

Schools like Cornell, Dartmouth and Notre Dame have class size statistics closer to Michigan than to Northwestern or Penn. Few would argue that Northwestern and Penn have smaller classes than Dartmouth or Notre Dame.

What I have noticed over the years (and I have scrutinized this matter substantially) is that Michigan generally has larger intro-level classes in popular subjects but virtually identical class sizes in intro-level classes in less popular subjects to its private peers. At the intermediate level, the gap in class size will decrease significantly and will become non-existant at the advanced level.

goldenboy8784

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q...6NVD_3RQ&pli=1

Gains In Chemistry Grads Persist | Back of Book | Chemical & Engineering News

Michigan conferred 484 Political Science, 233 History, and 140 Mathematics degrees in 2009. It also granted 83 bachelors degrees in Chemistry in 2008.

Sam, do you have the number for NU undergrads in these same departments for any given year? I would be shocked if they were anymore than 25% of that size in any of those 4 departments.

Alexandre, the only departments at Michigan that are "intimate" are Physics, Classics, and perhaps Philosophy. Northwestern and other leading private schools hold a massive edge over Michigan with regards to small class sizes in virtually every other field of study.

Sam Lee

Alexandre,

NU has smaller classes than Notre Dame. They have about the same number of undergrads but NU has more courses in one quarter than ND in one semester. NU is a bit larger than say, Stanford & Harvard but it has six colleges. Only half of the students are in arts & sciences and the student body in arts & sciences is smaller than that at Harvard/Stanford.

rjkofnovi

"Alexandre, the only departments at Michigan that are "intimate" are Physics, Classics, and perhaps Philosophy."

Please show actual numbers to verify your claims. If you cannot, then once again you are talking out of your *ss.