<p>My son and I will be visiting MIT and Harvard next week–followed by Columbia and Princeton. He has arranged to visit functionally equivalent math classes in linear algebra and multivariate calculus. These are, roughly speaking, advanced intro or intermediate level classes. At the Ivys, these courses are classroom-sized with a professor. But at MIT, it will be a big lecture with separate smaller sessions with a teaching assistant–sort of like a 101 intro at a state university. </p>
<p>My guess is that at MIT, given the large proportion of technically competent and interested students, even intermediate courses will have a large number of enrollees, but at the universities and LACs, the pool of students interested and able to take such courses will be smaller–yielding a better student teacher ratio.</p>
<p>I’d count this as a liberal arts advantage for students interested in science and math. No?</p>
<p>Our D is a sophomore at a medium-sized state university and is a STEM major. She is in the honors college. Both her linear algebra and multivariable calculus classes were small in size (less than 30 students). In fact, most of her classes have been small including the freshman courses. I believe she has only taken two courses (both intro level) that had over 100 students enrolled. She had one intro level class last year that only had about 12 students since it was the honors section.</p>
<p>You may be able to view the course catalog online for some of the colleges your S is considering. I know at my D’s university, you can see how many students are enrolled in all the courses that are offered.</p>
<p>I know this didn’t answer your question, but maybe it will help.</p>
<p>I think you might be in agreement with me. Your daughter is at a liberal arts university where a smaller number of students would be taking such courses. I’m not saying it’s a big versus little school divide, but a liberal arts versus tech school divide. At a tech school, almost everyone would eventually take linear/multivariate. At a liberal arts school, not so much.</p>
<p>Not sure how you came to this conclusion unless you consider any college that is not a “tech” school to be liberal arts. My D is NOT at a liberal arts university. It’s categorized as a public research university. I’d venture to say that at least 30% of the students are STEM majors (maybe even higher). It’s highly regarded for it’s STEM programs.</p>
<p>Our DS will major in math. At his top 3, non-lottery schools, he will have about 15 kids in each class for his major. Freshman year some of his classes will have up to 25 kids. These are all smaller LAC’s. At the rest of the schools he applied to, which are a little bigger, he will have 20-25 kids or so in most of his major courses. At his favorite non-lottery school they have about 10 math majors in each grade so those classes will be pretty small. He will focus on an actuarial science degree at the schools that have that program or will be a math major taking the courses needed for the actuarial tests.</p>
<p>Right. but the liberal arts college will have a lot fewer STEM faculty members. Thus, your conclusion is not causation. It’s really all about how the college wants to teach intro classes. Emory University, for example, teaches Calc 1 in classes maxed out at 30 with a facultly member – no TA. Other Unis have larger lecture halls.</p>
<p>The flip side is that if the number of students in a major is smaller, there may be insufficient demand to induce offering of a good selection of upper division courses in the major, or offer them frequently (the “once every two years” offering can mean having only once chance to take the course).</p>
<p>In any case, using categories of “tech school”, “university”, “LAC” is not as accurate as looking at the schools’ on-line schedules to see how large the classes are at each particular school, and looking at both the catalogs and schedules to see what the course selection and offering frequency is like at each school.</p>
<p>Learning is not just in the classroom. At MIT all students are invited (urged, encouraged, and in my son’s case, BEGGED) to do a UROP (undergrad research project) with a professor. Students have the option of taking a salary or taking course credit. There is a UROP database which outlines the pre-requisites (sometimes a professor wants students who have taken a particular sequence of classes) and the research topic, etc.</p>
<p>My son did not have some of the programming requirements for one of his UROP’s but the professor didn’t care- a couple of the grad students were able to teach him the basics until he became proficient. He did UROP’s for money during the summer and credit during the year- the best of both worlds.</p>
<p>Smaller U’s often have fierce competition for research opportunities for undergrads. Just not enough grant money to go around. One nice advantage of the Tech schools is that the opportunities are abundant- and if a kid does one and decides s/he doesn’t want to be a mechanical engineer after all, next semester s/he can get one in Urban Planning or Econ or the Media Lab and try out another discipline.</p>
<p>@latichever - MIT graduates 3-4 times as many engineering/computer science/math/physical science students as Harvard, Columbia or Princeton so it is reasonable to expect larger class sizes for the introductory and intermediate courses that most of those students will take. That doesn’t mean your son will not have some very large classes at these other schools. My D is a physics major at H and she has had a few classes with headcounts into the hundreds including the introductory CS class which is one of the most popular classes on campus. But as you would guess, most classes are much smaller.</p>
<p>I’d agree with the statement about limited class offerings for upper-level classes. I’m currently at a school that’s supposed to be higher ranked than my undergrad for my subfield (and much higher for “engineering” in general), yet there’s only about six classes offered by the department (on the quarter system). In undergrad I was taking 2-3 a semester for three years, plus there was then a bunch of classes I didn’t even get to.</p>
<p>Also, a large lecture for those “general” classes isn’t necessarily bad. Most large technical lecture classes will offer recitations at least once a week taught by a grad student/senior undergrad, who can often be better at teaching than a professor. In addition, with a large number of students taking a class, it’s likely there will be more out of classroom tutoring options available. At my undergrad we had additional recitations, walk-in tutoring, and peer tutoring available for most 200-level and below classes.</p>