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<p>A person’s thinking about, discussing, and writing about important and difficult ideas is in no way limited by the size of a classroom.</p>
<p>I think you’re putting to much emphasis on the professor-student interaction as a part of the college experience. In college, you’re exposed to new ideas that may be too politically questionable to discuss in a K-12 setting (e.g. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.) A big part of college is being exposed to new ideas that were previously unknown to you (e.g. difference between sex and gender) and important people you’d never previously heard of (e.g. Gottlob Frege.) </p>
<p>It’s also about meeting and interacting with people who may be a different race than you, richer/poorer than you, and come from a different part of the world than you. all of these factors help shape their beliefs about the world, and thereby diversifies your collegial experience in discussions with them both in and outside of the classroom.</p>
<p>I don’t think large class sizes really hinder discussion. I’d imagine that in most classrooms, there’s a set of students who want to discuss a topic, and a set of students that don’t. Perhaps Chicago attracts more of the former, but i doubt that’s the case for most other universities. If a student doesn’t want to speak, then his education is enhanced by those that do. A student may be too afraid to ask a question in front of other people, and so another student asking the same question he was wondering helps that student and enriches his education.</p>
<p>Ultimately the best university for a student is the one that meets his particular needs. And perhaps those needs are small classrooms with lots of discussion. I’m not going to try to claim that there weren’t students who complained about their experience at UCLA. I’ve heard complaints about both a lack of personal interaction, and difficulty getting desired classes. But just because a university isn’t perfect for you, that doesn’t prevent you from thriving at the university. Many people finish their time at UCLA and go on to have fruitful careers, just like a number of other universities.</p>
<p>What i will say is a point in your favor is feedback. In my experience, TAs generally provided poor feedback to students in their papers and students just had to keep writing until they became better writers. But students could always go to TAs office hours or make appointments to discuss their papers (many of us did this.) And professors could always be talked to at office hours, after class, or also by appointments.</p>
<p>Lastly, TK, I think you’re overemphasizing the amount of importance of small class sizes to the student body. When I was majoring in philosophy, about half of the major was filled with pre-law students who simply wanted to learn how to write analytically and think logically so that they could get a high score on the LSAT and from there get into top-ranked law schools. And for people, like myself, who were genuinely interested in the subject matter, large class sizes were outweighed by access to top scholars. (UCLA was ranked 7-11 in my time there.) Would i have been better served by a school like Harvard which would have provided me both? certainly. But i don’t think i was hindered by my time at UCLA, and i certainly don’t regret my time there.</p>