<p>Heh, I haven’t visited yet, but could someone give me a basic overview of what a classroom is like? the interactions, discussions, the professors, labs…</p>
<p>Here are the most some of the most common things that first-years take:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>HUMA
Every first-year takes the hum core sequence, which is taught seminar-style by a professor (sometimes grad student) and a writing intern. Hum classes are always less than 20 students. There’s usually a fair amount of class discussion. No one goes to office hours. The professor knows your name. </p></li>
<li><p>SOSC
Also a small seminar class, limited to 20 students. Also plenty of class discussion. The professor knows your name. </p></li>
<li><p>math
Calculus 150s and 130s classes are taught by grad students or instructors, limited to 30 (I think?) 160s (honors calculus)+above get professors. People show up to office hours. Some instructors make an effort to learn everyone’s name. </p></li>
<li><p>language
Languages are really time-consuming. If you take a rare language you can get placed in classes as small as 3, or there might be grad students in your class. </p></li>
<li><p>intro-level class for major
Typically econ, physics, or chem, all of which have very large lectures. Physics, chem, o-chem, bio all have four-hour labs attached (sometimes you get out early, but don’t count on it). TAs hold office hours. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>As for how good the classes are–well, it’s a mixed bag. It really depends on your professor and the particular students in your class. However, I think I only know one person who wasn’t happy academically this quarter. Personally I thought my classes were amazing. =) One weird trend I’ve found is that the harder a class is, the more people seem to like it. Harder classes (i.e. honors sequences of science and math) usually get better professors, smaller class sizes, and more involved students. Similarly, people seem more satisfied with the more traditional hums, even though they have heavier reading loads.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>S1 said his “largest” (physics & chem) classes were about 70-80 students. But, it’s all relative. While on a tour of UCSD I asked the tour guide if he had any small classes and he said, “Yes, of course. I have two this semester with only about 80 kids each.”</p>
<p>Hum: 20 people class. A very legit Philosophy tenured professor. The class is primarily a discussion based class. Everyone is pushed to join in and contribute in the class. The professor occasionally enlightens us of the meaning of the text but there is a lot of discussion in my Hume class.
The professor is knowledgeable, rarely shoots people down and is generally very good at letting students develop their thinking skills on the go. The class is quite forgiving when one says things incorrectly or bumbles a train of thought, the professor just asks you to reclarify.
Office hours are great! TA and prof always very helpful and willing to spend lots of time with you on your paper.</p>
<p>Civ: I’m in a class of about 30 students, I think I’m the only first year in it. There are about 10 or so grad students. This is mostly a lecture based class on a pretty complex level. Its very interesting though.
The atmosphere can be intimidating at times but it pushed me a lot to come up to speed with other people and study a lot. The proffesor and ta are very knowledgable. The professor is also very kind in helping me with my paper and if I want to clarify/ask things. (And in the end I ended up with a very good grade) </p>
<p>Bio core - probably about 40-50 people. Class was the most chill of all the things I took this quarter. I met some really interestng students in this class. The prof and ta actually knew their stuff but it was a oddly structured. Labs were interesting and short. (sampled our dna, measured skulls of different types of apes and humans) </p>
<p>calc - about 25 people. I felt it was more or less like your typical math class in highschool except it had more emphasis on proofs and theoritical things.</p>
<p>Regular level gen chem classes are around ~140 people (but many people don’t show up to lecture, so it will feel smaller). I think they’re the biggest classes in the school.</p>
<p>A lot of classes will be smaller-- ie, my SOSC this past quarter had 7 people in it, and my language next quarter only has 8. 'Course, some are a lot bigger, I think mainly in the sciences (?) - My metabolism & Exercise course for next quarter has 96, though it’s a lecture course, so I’m not concerned…</p>
<p>Can a current Chicago student please give me a sense of how many of your classes, over the course of four years, will have been taught by a graduate student who was primarily responsible for class instruction? I am interested in those cases in which the grad student was not serving as TA for a professor (say, in a large lecture course broken down into sections), but rather as primary teacher.</p>
<p>Here’s My Limited Experience.</p>
<p>HUMA/SOSC/Languages.</p>
<p>All of these will generally take place in a typical classroom featuring a ‘round’ table with about 20 chairs. There will be desks on the side of the room in case of overflow. There’s carpeted floors, comfortable chairs that lean back, and a big screen television for teaching (used occasionaly). There are also chalkboards.</p>
<p>MATH</p>
<p>My first math class room was built for about 20 desks and was filled with about 35. After a while, we were moved to a second classroom that featured about 50 stadium-style rows of seats. It wasn’t a lecture hall, but it wasn’t just a classroom… somewhere in between. Both rooms featured a chalkboard and a table for the teacher. The first was carpeted; the second was not.</p>
<p>@ beatitudo:</p>
<p>SOSC: I think my prof. for this last quarter is a grad student, but I’m not positive, as he may be a postdoc. In any case, my prof. next quarter is most definitely a grad student.
HUM: Fully tenured professor with a PhD in Classics, which is great, considering I’m taking Greek Thought & Lit.
RUSS: Grad student, but a very competent teacher.</p>
<p>I haven’t had any abysmal experiences with grad student teachers yet.</p>
<p>Thanks very much, neltharion. Any sense of whether this trend continues for second- through fourth-years in the college? Is it that the core is taught primarily by grad students, but upper-level departmental courses are taught by more senior faculty? Of course, your Hum class was taught by a full professor, but is that the exception or the rule?</p>
<p>The only grad student instructor S1 has had at Chicago has been for Calc. Three quarters of Greek Thought & Literature all professors (one was the Humanities Dean), Sosc all profs, physics all profs, bio all profs with one an MD from the med school who brought med students and residents to participate in class discussions, Civ all profs. Major has been all very distinguished profs.</p>
<p>Depending on the year, about 90-95% of classes are taught by full-time professors. The remaining 5-10% of classes are taught by grad students only their dissertation away from getting their graduate degree. </p>
<p>I had one calc class taught by a grad student and one English class, though the professor of English was writing like 200 pages on what he was teaching us, so he was pretty darn knowledgeable. I actually think it’s quite unusual to have upper level classes taught by grad students. I’ve had positive experiences with the two grad student professors I’ve had, but I definitely think that if my parents are going to pay for a private school education, I better be taught by awesome full-time professors! Also, I’ve NEVER heard of a 3rd or 4th year teaching a class, so if that’s what you’re worried about…</p>
<p>Thanks, idad. That’s very helpful to know. I would appreciate hearing others’ experience as well; I’d like to get a sense of whether it’s more typical to get grad students or faculty in general, and also whether certain sequences (e.g., Greek Thought & Literature for Hum) are more likely to be taught by faculty members.</p>
<p>^ Students have a decent amount of wiggle room if they are that opposed to having graduate students teach. I don’t think one core sequence has more grad students teaching than another.</p>
<p>I would also point out that there’s this idea that grad students are obviously inferior to professors when it comes to teaching, connections, or anything like that, but I would say that my favorite teachers, mentors, and people has been a mix of professors and grad students. Funny thing-- somebody who taught me Core my first year here was basically the equivalent of a minimum wage slave, but he was revered by students and professors alike. Now the minimum wage slave has a tenure-track position at a very esteemed school, where his students (my acquaintances) continue to adore him and he continues to contribute to his field. So catch the stars as they are on the rise! </p>
<p>The key tool for assessing a class is evaluations.uchicago.edu, which is password protected.</p>
<p>My kids have often had different teachers for different quarters of the same core sequence. There are a certain number of recently-minted PhDs hired exclusively to teach core classes; I’m sure the university counts them as full faculty.</p>
<p>Kid 1: Hum (Reading Cultures? or whatever it is called) – 1st quarter recent PhD, pretty terrible. 2nd quarter hot-stuff grad student, recipient of many prizes, much better. Writing TA was good, and even better in retrospect when kid appreciated more how spot on his advice had been. Sosc (SCS) – ABD grad student, excellent. Not certain if she taught all three quarters. Kid loved SCS.</p>
<p>Kid 2: Hum (HBC) – Recent PhD, wonderful, kid would take any class he offered despite fact that kid has sworn never to take a lit class and professor’s PhD is in English. Also had a huge man-crush on the writing TA, a Div student (who helped him enormously). Sosc (SCS) – 1st and 3rd quarters, ABD grad student, kid disliked; 2nd quarter senior faculty/dept. chairman, kid loved completely.</p>
<p>All of both kids’ Civ classes were taught by full professors, I believe. Kid 1 had Famous Emeritus for core history of drama (OK, but not really to her taste). Kid 2 had music grad student teaching core history of music (fine). Both kids had grad students for calculus (130s and 150s). Kid 1 really liked hers, despite nearly flunking the class second quarter – appreciated how hard he tried to find ways to engage her, and his practical advice in talking her back from the edge and getting her through the course.</p>
<p>I think one of the charms of Greek Thought is that, yes, it is taught by relatively senior professors. I know in HBC some big names will teach one quarter (usually spring, which is not required).</p>
<p>Outside the Core, Kid 2 has had only actual faculty teaching courses. Kid 1 signed up for several seminars which were essentially grad students in her department teaching their defense-ready dissertations; she knew the teachers personally or by reputation.</p>
<p>I will add on my own behalf that one of the advantages of going to a top university is that you have top grad students. Not only do they help bridge the gap between undergraduates and senior faculty, but if it’s a strong department they can be pretty amazing in their own right. People I had as grad student TAs in college wound up as department chairs at Yale, Harvard, and Michigan, and as a famous TV writer/producer, and they were completely awesome as grad students. One of my wife’s TAs became a household-name legal scholar. People talk about grad students as if they had cooties, but at a good program that’s not likely to be the case at all.</p>
<p>Thank you, all. To clarify, I am not predisposed against graduate students; in fact, the ones who are good at teaching can prove more enthusiastic and less burnt out than a full prof who’s been at it for 40 years. I ask because I’m trying to get a glimpse of the College’s general approach to pedagogy, as well as its relationship to the various departments within the University; these are reflected, in part, by whom they choose to teach their students.</p>
<p>I’m curious, for example, about the apparent difference in staffing the core sequences for Calc and Greek T&L. Any ideas about why senior folks in philosophy & literature might be more inclined (or more required) to teach undergraduates than the mathematicians?</p>
<p>There are a TON of math classes, keep in mind. Probably many, many more than sections of GTL.</p>
<p>My experiences:</p>
<p>GTL (for Hum): Insanely tenured professor who is head of the Fundamentals major here. Rhetorician. Insanely knowledgeable about everything Greek. Class was more lecturey than I had expected, but I actually preferred her thoughts on the texts to those of my classmates, as she was insanely smart. Overall good. Next quarter I have another tenured professor; I dropped his name to some upperclassmen and they had heard good things about him. He’s on the experts.uchicago.edu page, so I guess that makes him a superstar academic as well. :)</p>
<p>Calc 131: Easiest class in terms of concepts; then again, I got a 4 on AB but bombed the placement test and had no desire to wrestle with real proofs like you do in the 150s and 160s. (Not a math person at all.) Grad student teacher–obviously knowledgeable, dry sense of humor, but I did not like the class because a) tutorials are not my favorite thing, b) it is a morning class, c) I hate math, and d) it was way too easy for me and the teacher did not make it engaging. I think it was his first quarter teaching. He wasn’t a superstar teacher by any means but he really did get to know all 30-40 of us by name, which impressed me; could’ve been a lot worse. Got another quarter with the same teacher.</p>
<p>Core Bio: Bane of my academic existence this past quarter. If you don’t know bio it might go a little too quickly for you; if you do know bio, like I do, it is conceptually pretty easy but has some annoying busy-work. The readings (very limited overall) were pretty interesting. Knowledgeable lecturer and TAs but teaching bio to kids who aren’t math/science people is not a fun or easy task, and most if not all of my classmates treated it as a total joke class (which in many respects it was). Then again, I actually do not like hands-on learning much, so the many mini-labs and the focus on hands-on learning did not please me. No formal lab-write-ups, though. You’ll have to take bio here unless you have a 5 on the ap test, and this isn’t a bad way to do it if you’re a non-major.</p>
<p>Italian 101: Amazing. I love languages, and so does my teacher. She’s a doctoral candidate in Italian here but is obviously fluent in the language and the culture and is very, very engaging and encouraging. 18 people in the class, which is large for a language class. Immersion, so everything is in Italian, but you learn quickly and the overall attitude from the faculty is extremely positive. Average amount of work, but at the 101 level it’s basic and fun and my background in Latin makes the reading/comprehension part especially easily for me personally. In language classes you get to know many members of the faculty as a whole, since in addition to lectures we have lector sessions (basically extra speaking/listening practice in smaller groups) once a week and do a cultural activity once a week, and the lectors/cultural activity people are just as engaging and knowledgeable as the full lecturers. Chicago is known for its language programs and for good reason–the Italian department, though not as full-blown as Spanish or French, is very, very solid and pleasant to deal with and everyone I’ve met so far in it is committed to instructing.</p>
<p>beatitudo: I doubt you will find an actual professor actually teaching introductory calculus at any university in the country. (By “actually teaching”, I mean interacting with students, not merely giving an occasional lecture and leaving the heavy lifting to discussion sections with TAs.) At Chicago, they may have actual professors teaching 160s honors calculus, or at least the inquiry-based sections of it, but then not many universities offer effectively four different levels of basic calculus.</p>
<p>S1 reports:
Math (five courses) – has had only profs for his classes (started with IBL Analysis). He is a Junior Tutor for a 130s course. Math classes have been <25 students.
Comp Sci (three courses) – has had only profs. Courses have had 12-15 students.
Hum (HBC) – PhD student in her final year; now has tenure-track at a major university to which many CCers aspire. S thought she was fabulous.
Sosc (Soc & Pol Thought) – PhD student
German – PhD student, <20 students
Bio – Prof. Class had 40-50 students.
Philosophy of Mind and Science Fiction elective – Professor. Class was slated for 40, but it is only offered every three years, so they arranged for another TA for grading and opened it up to 65.</p>
<p>Thanks, Miles and CountingDown, for your willingness to share this information. </p>
<p>JHS, sorry to draw yet again from my own experience as an undergraduate, but I had Serge Lang teach me introductory calculus my freshman year. Every class. No more than 15-20 students in my section, and he taught several. Tells you something about how the university allocates resources, and whether it attracts people who are interested in teaching undergraduates. </p>
<p>Don’t get me wrong: the fact that Chicago uses graduate students to teach core calculus wouldn’t dissuade me from sending my son there. But if a preponderance of core courses were taught by graduate students (which, happily, appears not to be the case), it would be something to consider. I’m just trying to get the lay of the land here.</p>