Graduate quality vs. undergraduate quality

whenhen
Thu, 30 Jan 2014 01:58:18 +0000

What do these numbers mean for the typical classroom experience in the pre-med track or in popular majors? In Fall 2013, Berkeley’s General Biology 1A Lecture enrolled 626 students. The Organic Chemistry 112A lecture enrolled 165. The Introduction to Economics lecture enrolled 711. TA-led discussion classes associated with big lectures typically enroll less than 50 students (sometimes less than 20).

They mean the student will be in large lecture classes and smaller discussion sections. What you cannot extrapolate from those numbers is how rigorous these larger classes are. I’ve watched many Berkeley lectures and done some of the problem sets to supplement my own classes, both at my previous school and current one. As best I can tell, the huge lecture courses at these schools are extremely rigorous and demand a great deal from students. Btw, MIT, Harvard, and Stanford all employ the large lecture class model for some of their intro classes, but I don’t hear people complaining that these students lack a solid foundation in their fields of study.