@PennCAS2014 While in some major you might be able to avoid large classes, what about majors like comp sci? How big are the intro classes at Penn in comp sci, in statistics?
Also remember that the “percentage of classes” statistic hides the real impact of those percentages. For example, if a school says that it has 20 percent of its classes over 100 students and 80 percent of its classes under 25 students, what that really means is that fully half of a typical student’s classes are in a class of over 100. That is because those big classes hold 5 times as many students, so a student is 5 times more likely to be in one of them (at least statistically).
Student/faculty ratios also can be misleading. Columbia, for example, has a very low student to faculty ratio, but it has a ton of celebrity profs who rarely if ever teach, or teach one seminar to ten students. Meanwhile, its intro classes are very large, as large as they are at public universities.
It’s pretty darn hard to quantify class sizes between schools, because there are so many different ways to present the information.
One other way to look at it is the presence of TAs. I didn’t attend Middlebury, but when I was at Williams (and I believe this is still the case), there was literally no such thing as a TA class. Every class was taught by a professor. I never even had a discussion section with a TA and I doubt such sections even existed.
At Amherst TAs lead labs and study (not as far as I know discussion) sessions for the larger intro science courses. Otherwise they assist the professor in the classroom (or as my D says, “I want that job - they get paid to sit there and do nothing during lecture”).
I went to Vassar and never had a TA teach any class or section.
@jademaster it kind of depends. At Penn at least, many high-demand classes like Econ will have a large lecture/small recitation option or, alternatively, students might be offered a smaller seminar-style intro class. For those high-demand classes it will depend on the semester but I have often found that there is usually a smaller option teaching identical material for students who thrive in a more intimate classroom environment. That is not always the case at Penn and it is never the case at some other ivies… which all leads me back to my point that making generalizations about the schools isn’t all the productive.
@OHMomof2 are you sure about that? From the way my daughter describes it for her Amherst science classes, if a class is large enough to have both a lecture and break out discussion sections, the discussion sections are also led by a professor. She was in a couple of classes of about 60 people which broke into three sections for discussion and labs, and it had three professors teaching the class. The professors would rotate the lecture sessions, and each professor would lead a discussion section and lab session. The TAs were just an extra resource to go to if you were having trouble with the work and needed to discuss it outside of office hours.
@ThankYouforHelp help I just texted her to double check - no, you’re right, she did not have TAs lead discussion sections OR labs, her regular professors led both. She did have a TA for her Spanish discussion section, but her Spanish class with the professor had less than 20 students. I’m guessing the Spanish discussion was more like an opportunity to practice her Spanish.
I’d thought her lab leader first semester, who she became close to and who wrote her recs for summer research was a TA but he is a full professor.
My bad, thanks for making me double check!
@PennCAS2014 Do you have any numbers or specific examples? I find it hard to believe that any university will offer an introductory course as a large lecture with the same contents as that offered in smaller class at the same time. Unless the latter option is part of an honors college or something.
Some schools (including Williams and Princeton) post online course schedules showing enrollment details.
So you can look up the actual enrollment number or enrollment limit for the courses that most interest you.
In my opinion, class size is one of the most important distinctions between LACs and research universities. Of course, it’s not the only significant difference. A research university is likely to offer more majors and many more courses than a LAC. This can be an important factor if you’re possibly interested in a less popular major (like Linguistics) or a specialized sub-field (like classical archaeology) or if you’re entering college at a very advanced level in certain subjects (such as a foreign language/literature or mathematics.)
@Jademaster absolutely. For example, next semester it appears Penn’s College will be offering a General Chemistry I lecture with a max enrollment of 135 students and it will also be offering a General Chemistry I lecture with a max enrollment of 65 students. It is not part of an honors college as UPenn, like the other ivies, doesn’t have an honors college. A lot of students want to take the most popular courses at Penn and this is a way to ensure that students have opportunities to study in the environments that best suit their learning preferences.
Although, in that instance, both the larger lecture of 135 and the smaller lecture of 65 students do seem to have recitation components to foster greater dialogue and to review the material from the larger lecture. A recitation would not be offered if the smaller lecture were not as large as the one in this example here.