<p>Actually bclintonk, there is nothing wrong with Michigan’s s/f ratio. The reason it seems higher than its peers is because most of Michigan’s peers are private elites such as Cornell, Northwestern and Penn. The reason why Michigan’s ratio stands at 15:1 while Cornell, NU and Penn and most private elites stand at 6:1-9:1 is because Michigan includes 10,000 graduate students in their calculation, while the private elites only include undergraduate students. If private universities calculated their ratios as Michigan does, their ratio would usually be in the 11:1-12:1 range.</p>
<p>As for class size, Michigan is not that different from most of its peers. Michigan does not load its curriculum with hundreds of seminar classes as most other universities. If it did, it too would have an impressive 70%:10% ratio of classes with fewer than 20 and greater than 50 students. Those seminars are certainly fun, but they do not add much to the academic experience. Most of the people I know who attended universities will required freshmen seminars thought the requirement was pointless, if not a cumbersome hassle. I compared class sizes for similar classes with friends who attended several private peers, and sat in on several undergraduate classes at Cornell personally, and classes were simply not noticeable larger at Michigan. Speaking of Cornell, it is one of the few private universities that does not “game” the class size data by flooding its curriculum with useless seminars. Some universities are so desperate to make class size stats look impressive that they actually split lectures into smaller lectures taught by the same professor. Instead of having one lecture with 130 students, you have three with 40-45 students each. </p>
<p>At Michigan, I was amazed at how intimate classes were in most majors. The advanced Mathematics and Physics classes I took seldom had more than 10 or 15 students, and they were always taught by super star faculty. I hear advanced classes in the humanities (like the Classics and Philosophy) are similar in size. Obviously, popular majors, such as Biology, Economics, English, History, Political Science and Psychology have large-ish classes, even at the advanced levels, but that is the same at private universities given the popularity of those majors. </p>
<p>You mentioned LACs in your post. Comparing Michigan, or any research-intensive university that spends more than $300 million in research annually, to a LAC is pointless. The benefits that a LAC offers are beyond contestation, so are the drawbacks of attending such institutions vas-a-vis far more well rounded research institutions.</p>
<p>In short, Michigan has the quality and resources to provide the best possible undergraduate experience. HYPSM are in a league of their own of course, but most other elite universities offer similar opportunities as Michigan.</p>