The Polar Opposite Conundrum: LAC vs Berkeley

BerkeleySenior
Sat, 05 Apr 2008 17:50:34 +0000

Many of my upper division courses had 15-20 students in them.



What did you major in? This is highly unusual.

The fact is at a LAC you don’t have to exert yourself to the max just to talk to a professor. At a LAC you get a much better student: teacher ratio. At a LAC you get more one-on-one support and probably better structured lectures.

For anyone who has ever taken a math/science/econ/business/etc. class you realize that the lectures are oftentimes completely useless. You are better off reading the textbook and never going to class.

Not to mention the GSIs have what, one office hour a week and then they are usually filled with students because they tend to schedule them the day before a problem set is due. You can barely talk to your GSI let alone ask a question. And the professors have no idea what the problem set entails since the GSIs wrote them, so you can’t ask them either. Plus the professors never grade your work, so if you want to get to know them, it’s difficult for them to know you on an academic level.