<p>^^PrincessMahi- How on earth did you guys have different classes with only 4 kids? High dropout rate? Did u hve one teacher for all grades or something? That sounds prettyyyy expensive! I’d die if my class was only 4 kids, heck we’ve got a class of 330 and I feel like I’m constantly seeing the same 30 kids lol!
I think I’d prefer a large research college with a smaller honors program in a warm location. Funny considering I’m applying to mostly small LACs in cold weather! (I love the programs @ the LAC, but love the people @ the universities)</p>
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<p>This may be true for you, but that doesn’t make it true for everyone. My graduating class in high school had 96 people in it. The whole school was just 400 students. Then I went to a large state university of 30,000+, and I’m out-of-state, and I had almost no trouble transitioning. And I am an introvert, and extremely shy around people I don’t know. I had a very smooth adjustment. And I love the fact that the school is so big. Like someone else said, you can make a big school small but you can’t make a small school big. And believe it or not there IS a sense of community here. And a huge sense of school spirit. </p>
<p>Because it’s such a big school, there’s always so much going on. I don’t drink or party, but I have no trouble finding fun things to do. And there’s countless clubs and organizations.</p>
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<p>^Same experience Bornin92.</p>
<p>I had absolutely no difficulties in making the transition from small private school (graduating class of 43) to huge public state university (class of 4550). And even though my school is so big, I still do run into the other three people who came here from my high school at least once a week and two of them live about a twenty minute walk away from me. (The other, ironically, lives directly across the hall from me, so I see him all of the time.) I run into the same people all of the time. My professors, for the most part, know my name. If I really need help from them, they’re very reachable. They have office hours or I can email them and ask them to meet at a different time.</p>
<p>On the flip side, I have a friend who went to a huge high school with 750 in her graduating class. That means her freshman class was a whole bunch larger than that. She’s had a much more difficult transition than I have.</p>
<p>It really depends on the person. For some people the transition is seamless, while for others it is extremely difficult. I really don’t think that depends on the size of the schools you’re going to or coming from. I think it has more to do with the individual person, how independent they are, and how they react to new situations.</p>
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<li><p>It’s awful having hundreds of research opportunities at my fingertips. :(</p></li>
<li><p>I love it when small, discussion-based classes are held up because Johnny doesn’t understand the material and has to be hand-held every day. :)</p></li>
<li><p>Undergraduate degrees are worthless, you say? Well, the solution is obviously to spend twice as much money to go to a private school. :D</p></li>
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<h1>1 is also true of large private research universities like Stanford, Harvard, Yale, etc. I go to a large Ivy research university and the professors here are far more concerned with research than teaching. And personally, I like teaching and I want to teach at an LAC, but I am encouraged not to spend too much time on teaching so I can focus on my research. In fact, my Ivy hires academic advisors so that the professors don’t have to do it.</h1>
<p>It’s also not true that “most of the time” the TAs are out of the loop - it depends on the professor, honestly. I’ve had classes in which I knew exactly the structure of the class and what was coming and I’ve had classes in which I was surprised when the professor announced something in class. But honestly, even a first-year PhD student can teach the intro 101 in their field. Their inexperience comes from classroom management and evaluation, not from lack of knowledge of the subject.</p>
<p>I must agree that I am biased towards LAC education - where the professors actually teach you (as opposed to the grad students), where they actually advise you (as opposed to hired advisers in another office), you can get to know professors and you are part of a small and tight-knit community of people.</p>
<p>However, a lot of people enjoy the big school environment and thrive there. There are more cutting-edge research opportunities, bigger libraries, more resources, and with 40,000 students you are bound to find people you share interests with. Small schools tend to attract certain types of students, and a lot of students feel outcasted there. At a large public flagship there’s pretty much every type of person.</p>