UC Berkeley vs Lewis & Clark vs Hampshire

mamenyu
Thu, 22 Apr 2010 18:37:37 +0000

It is absolutely possible to graduate from Cal in 4 years. English there has a very large faculty, and historically ranks as one of the top 2-3 in the US. Nearly all the courses, apart from first year writing, are taught by professors (they now also have some newly minted PhD’s from the department as post-docs teaching a few of the courses). There are loads of courses to choose from. There is also a comparative literature department and rhetoric department offering courses that might be interesting for an English major - and great German, French, Spanish, etc. departments, with courses in translation as well as in the original languages. Some of the courses in the English department are large, but not unreasonably so (and no larger than those at comparable top universities, including Yale and Harvard), many are small - the humanities actually are very different than the sciences at Cal in that respect.
If the choice was between an LAC with a particularly strong English department (Williams or Oberlin, for example), it might be a closer call because of the greater ease of contact with faculty.