How are classes in McGill like?

Blobof
Thu, 05 Apr 2012 10:57:04 +0000

There’s not much relationship to be had with most profs of large courses. If that’s all they teach, they’re either part-timers, grad students or tenured no-longer-involved-in-research profs. Professors who still do research will also teach graduate courses and advanced undergrad courses from time to time, and not end up teaching the early gigantic courses too often. And since McGill really is research intensive, profs will not seek contact with students in large classes, though some may start “recruiting” potential graduate students in third and fourth year courses. So, if you don’t take the initiative, they’ll assume you’re just your random, average, uninvolved student.

As to quality of teaching: it depends on the class, the prof, and the student’s learning style. Some students just don’t adapt/work well in large lectures with little interaction and no in class exercises/work-on-your-own time (my brother’s ex girlfriend couldn’t do calculus in university, so she went back and took it in cegep and got 95% there). Other courses have readily available slides, recorded lectures, extra material for outside class that make learning in and out of the gigantic class a breeze (supposing you’re sufficiently independent).