As in schools that can offer small class sizes and very close relationships with teachers while being at a school with 5,000 to 20,000 students?
If you attend a Claremont consortium school, you get the benefit of an LAC sized school with the benefits of the larger campus (around 5,000 students across all 5 schools).
Honors colleges at smaller state schools or larger LACs.
Also the Residential College at UMich.
Be careful with honor colleges as an intimate setting in a big sea. Some indeed are, with designated housing, a core of required honors-section courses, and lots of special programs and events. An example might be UT Austin’s Plan II program. Many, however, are really just a collection of priority registration/housing rights, the ability to take regular courses for honors credit, and a few honors mixers each semester along with an extra college advisor or two.
Most of the universities with the smallest classes are the elite universities. If you look at those with the smallest percentages of classes with 50+ students, you’ll see universities like Wake Forest (0.9%), Chicago (5.5%), Georgetown (6.5%), Duke (6.6%), Tufts (7.5%), etc. In comparison, the figures are 2.9% at Williams and 3.5% at Wesleyan, to pick two of the larger LACs.
The larger LACs, including the Claremonts, are very different from universities, as they lack graduate classes/programs as well as the variety of majors that a larger university offers. You won’t find a major in Egyptology at any LAC like you would at Johns Hopkins or Chicago, for example. There is no “right” choice, but it is a distinction to keep in mind.
The tour guide at Georgetown described the uni exactly like that at the undergrad level; small class sizes except for a couple of general intro-level freshman courses, close relationships with professors.
The larger LACs tend to employ a larger percentage of tenure-track faculty.
Wake Forest, William and Mary, University of Richmond, Duke, Clemson University, Tulane, Tufts, Case Western, Northwestern, Santa Clara University, Wash U, Vanderbilt, Worcester Polytechnic (WPI), RPI, Creighton, Boston College.
With about 3900 students, Rice is a bit under your lower limit of 5,000, but it offers a truly intimate setting, along with the resources and opportunities of an elite research university.
@jellyjam123 If you have the grades/stats for ivy league admissions, UPenn fits your criteria well. It has about 10,000 undergrads, a student to faculty ratio of 6:1, 95% of the classes in the College of Arts and Sciences (which has about 6500-7000 of the undergrads) are taught by full faculty members, about 70% of classes have fewer than 20 students and only 10% of classes over 50 students. Very often, my English classes were just 7-12 students and a professor sitting in comfy armchairs and couches in the professor’s office or at a table in Fisher Bennett Hall, discussing Milton, Virginia Woolf, Chaucer, etc.
A few other things to note:
Penn also does an exceptional job of making a medium sized university feel very small. The College House system turns the residential system into a community with many activities for residents and faculty members who act as Faculty Deans in each College House to act as a resources, sources of guidance, and friends.
When you matriculate at Penn, you are given:
- A Peer Advisor (an upperclassmen dedicated to helping you navigate College life from a student’s perspective)
- A Pre-Major Advisor (a faculty member from one of the departments you indicated you were interested in, who will help you navigate course selection, requirements, and everything academic)
- A College Office Advisor (to help you navigate everything to do with the more administrative side of the university)
- Then, during your sophomore or junior year you will pick a major advisor who will be added to these other resources and act as a guide through your specific fields of interest.
So in all, you will be assigned 4 advisors to help you navigate the complexities of university life and even after you take on a major advisor, you still keep the other three advisors as well.
In addition to formal advising, Penn has a number of programs for students who want faculty interaction and smaller communities. As one of the great research universities, Penn really encourages students to get involved in faculty research and to start their own. Thus you can ask any of your professors if you can help them out on projects they’re working on or you can ask them to be your research mentor on a project of your own. Alternatively, you can use Penn’s Center For Undergraduate Research and Fellowships (CURF) to be assigned to research that interests you.
Penn also has many smaller communities on campus that exist through extracurricular activities and various “hubs” on campus like the Kelly Writers House (for those interested in creative writing and literature), The Civic House (for community service), the Cultural Houses (for students with ethnic identities that are represented in the school and their supportive friends), the Perry World House, and more! (none of these “houses” are places where you live; they’re just called houses because they have physical ‘houses’ on campus).
As an undergrad at Penn, I always felt as though I was in a small university even though it is unquestionably medium sized. I was able to form strong bonds with friends and faculty mentors and I always felt extremely supported. I am still in touch with faculty members who wrote me letters of recommendation and continue to be supportive of my professional/educational ambitions even though I have graduated. There are also many more opportunities and communities I didn’t mention but that I’m happy to discuss if you come across them or have more specific ideas for types of communities you would like to hear about!
If you have any questions about Penn, feel free to ask. And good luck!
Before suggesting schools it would be helpful to know things like your academic stats, what you can afford, any geographic preferences etc.
^ I agree 100%.
I also think that on some level… developing “very close relationships” with professors… has something to do with the student… at least in part.
I don’t know whether it would suit you in other regards, but UC Santa Cruz has fewer than 20k students (one of the smaller UC campuses), and it operates around 11(?) residential colleges.