The Core requirements are:
- Humanities, Civilization Studies, and the Arts (total: 600 units/6 quarter courses)
- Natural Sciences (Biological Sciences and Physical Sciences) and Mathematical Sciences (total: 600 units/6 quarter courses)
- Social Sciences (total: 300 units/3 quarter courses)
Students are required to have at least 42 quarter credits to graduate and 42 divided by 3 is 14, thus it’s clear the college is including the science and math courses in the Core, which it claims caps classes at 19 students. Thus the author’s issue.
The earlier description of the Core seems accurate, the current description inaccurate, in that it implies that a third of a student’s introductory courses will be capped at 19.
Of course this says nothing about how many small upper level seminars UChicago offers. It appears to have a large number of small classes. The question one always has to ask (as at any school) is how likely a student is to be in one. IOW, if a school offers 99 individual tutorials and one class of 300 a student’s chance of being in a large class for one course is not 1%, it’s 75%. Without a deep dive into any school’s enrollment numbers it’s difficult to suss this out.