I attended an Ivy-type school for college (UChicago) and an excellent state flagship for grad school (Michigan). I am convinced that the undergraduate experience at the Ivy-type schools is significantly more intellectual, rigorous, and challenging. From the beginning I had very small classes, I knew my professors, got detailed personal feedback from my professors on my writing, etc. We did not have huge classes, multiple choice tests, or classes taught by TAs. Expectations for quality of work was uniformly high.
My grad school friends who went to undergraduate schools like Yale and Williams reported the same sort of experience. Meanwhile, my friends who attended state flagships like Michigan, Berkeley and UVa did not get that kind of focus and attention until a few classes in their last year or two (if at all).
I definitely had to work much harder than any of my high school friends to keep up with my UChicago classmates and satisfy my professors. I had a friend visit me who was attending Georgetown, and he could not stop talking about how much more intense and intellectual Chicago was than Georgetown in classes and around campus - and Georgetown is an excellent school.
I think there is an American mythology that “the only thing hard about the elite schools is getting in” and larger state schools provide the same educational experience. In my experience, this myth simply is not true.
With that said, no doubt a great educational experience can be had at any school- but at some schools it only happens for a small percentage of the class, the very best students who fight to get the best opportunities and attention. At Chicago, it was experiences by the entire class.
Ivy League and other elite schools can have large classes as well. Better to check each school’s class schedules to see if they show class sizes and how large they are if shown rather than assuming based on private versus public, school prestige, or student to faculty ratio.
With ivy league/elite private schools, you’re getting significantly smaller class sizes and more personalized attention (few–if any–500+ person lectures, the same professor for entire sequences, better personalized advising, etc). You will generally have more grade inflation than at elite public schools (although this may be outweighed by the higher caliber of the class, things like Brown and Harvard’s median 3.6+ are rather ridiculous). A few extremely specific jobs (banking/consulting type things) will be much easier to get from elite private schools. Grad school admit rates are somewhat higher from these schools as well.
As someone who attends an elite private school, I do not believe there is any real difference in “intellectualism,” “excellence,” or “spark” (so to speak–use any of the terms thrown about on this site) between the top students at elite private schools and the top students at elite public schools. The most intellectual and intelligent students from my high school generally ended up at Cal, and we sent plenty to Stanford, Northwestern, UChicago and the ivy league.
The median student at elite private schools probably had better high school numbers than the median students at elite public schoosl, but top students at elite public schools are just as strong academically as top students at the Harvards/Yales/Princetons of the world.
The median student at an elite private school is from a significantly wealthier family than the median student at an elite public school, and there is a higher concentration of exceedingly wealthy students at elite privates than elite publics. Look at the recent NYT article on the subject.
Harvard CS 50 has lots of discussion/recitation sections led by TAs: https://cs50.harvard.edu/sections . That implies that the main lecture is quite large.
This is not necessarily a better environment unless your career and social goals make it so that social contacts with the scions of extreme wealth are desirable to reaching those goals, even at the expense of less social contact with those from more ordinary backgrounds. Also, among the scions of wealth, those motivated to build their own achievements* beyond their inheritances may be more desirable social contacts than those who will coast along in life on their inheritances.
*Not necessarily in terms of just making more money; some may choose to achieve in a charitable manner.
@ucbalumnus I’ll have to ask a few friends, but I doubt that Harvard CS 50 lectures have the same number of students as, say, Cal CS 61A (just based on the total number of students at the school). I have heard (from people currently going through Cornell CS tracks) that Cornell CS and engineering intro courses are extremely large; no dispute there.
I also completely agree that going to a school with a ton of wealthier kids is in no way an inherent benefit; in fact I’d assume that the atmosphere is more academic and focused at a school with a smaller percentage of students raised in extreme privilege. As I said in the my original post, my high school routinely sent top students to Cal rather than Ivy League institutions, and I don’t know anyone who made that choice who’s unhappy with it.
Realistically, the personal attention from the instructor is not likely to be significantly different at different class sizes once you get into the hundreds of students.
My daughter is an OOS student at a top public that is often discussed on CC. She graduated at the very top of her HS class and has HS friends at the Ivies. She did not want to apply to any.
After reading this thread I made the mistake of asking her how rigorous, challenging and intellectual her classes and peer groups are compared to where her HS friends go. I got a few seconds of silence followed by…wow …I can’t believe what an elitist question you just asked me. The people I go to school with are some of the most brilliant people I have ever met. Please do not ask me questions like that again. I quickly changed the subject and was angry at myself.
There are large classes at the Ivies as well as at state schools. There are also small classes at both. My daughter has had two research positions so far ( she is a sophomore) and the one she has now will last until graduation. She also has a research faculty advisor who will help her with another research position and help her receive academic credit for her research. Last year she presented at a multi-school conference and met people from all over the world. She also runs a group for one of the intro classes- for credit. She eats meals with her professors and gets emails from them about internships. When she had trouble adjusting last year one of her professors regularly checked in with her. Last night she received another email from a class she just completed inviting her to participate in yet another research project.
I think the biggest differences between her school versus the Ivies would be:
Attending a state school means a lot come from that state. My daughter does have many friends from all over, however most students are from instate. This was an adjustment for her and is something we did not think about. She is happy now and thinks it’s cool to be “different.”
Despite the fact that many students have Ivy level “stats,” it is a state school and there are students there who would likely not get into an Ivy League school. A state school has an obligation to educate the students who live there. This does not take away from the rigor and ability to engage in meaningful conversations with peers.
My daughter’s school is economically diverse. That is what she wanted. Not sure how it compares to the Ivies.
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My daughter needed balance- that was our #1 concern. She did say ( once) that she wished she applied to an Ivy so that she could have participated in “Ivy Day,” but other than that she has no regrets. I think the biggest lesson here is that you will get a great education and experience at either school type and you will get out of it what you put in. Her friends who attend Ivy League schools are very happy ( they are great schools) but to be honest none have had (so far) the experiences she has had ( presented a paper at a multi-school conference as a freshman, eating meals and going for runs with professors, tutoring their own children, etc). Does this mean those experiences do not exist? No. It just means that her friends have not had them.
As far as alumni connections etc- you will find this at both.
On class size, there are a lot of lesser known LACs which offer class sizes just as small or in some cases even better than the 8 ivies and ivy-equivalents. Even at a large public U, by the time you’re in your junior year, most of the classes in your major can be in the 20-40 students range.
Hmm, my kid at UW was invited spring of freshman year to go on a summer research trip with his professor. This was a professor whom he had in a large lecture class first semester and, because he enjoyed that class so much, took the prof’s Honors section in the spring of freshman year, capped at 20 students. The student’s performance and engagement in both courses with the prof led to the invitation to work with him further. The difference is not necessarily the raw opportunity – or some notion that such opportunity is only provided by uber selective schools – but by what a student makes of the experience.
You can look at this a couple of ways. First, would the core education be comparable at Cornell or Michigan, Penn or Virginia, Columbia or Berkeley, and Dartmouth or William and Mary? For the most part, I think it would be comparable. For instance, if you could put the same pre-med student through both options they would probably learn about the same through the classroom, do about the same on MCAT, and also have the chance to do the now- required work in research, etc.
What would be different is the students. The Ivy schools would have much more geographic diversity, would have students that are better qualified on average, and the students and their families would likely be more affluent and connected on average. Some take this as a positive (e.g. more prestige), but some will also take it as a negative (e.g. elitist).
What I don’t think should be taken as a given, regardless of whether the institution is Ivy Plus or public, is the institution’s commitment to undergraduate education. Graduate studies and research often get much more attention. And, despite the massive increases in college tuition, teaching loads are going down and the more of the teaching responsibility falls to non-tenure and teaching assistants.
However, if the school is unable to hire enough instructors for small classes to meet student demand, it has to choose between bigger classes and denying some students entry into the class. CS may be a more difficult subject to hire TT or adjunct faculty in, because schools are also competing against industry.
Note that Harvey Mudd’s introductory CS course enrolls about 200.
Nonetheless, the topic in this thread may relate to a false dichotomy. While private and public universities may enroll introductory CS classes in specific cases of 701 (Harvard) and 1568 students (UCB) – and may therefore be fairly similar from an individual student’s perspective – at least some LACs in this range of selectivity appear to regularly enroll equivalent classes with a maximum of 26 students.
Yes, @merc81 , the discussion is in broad strokes and claims of class size difference are not going to hold true in all situations. I’m surprised that needs to be stated, but if it does, it does. It is true, though, in broad strokes that rich privates like the Ivies have more resources per student, and part of the way that’s “felt” by students is greater professor access and more personal advising, counseling, and career guidance. Not in all cases, not for all students, but in general.
You dont get something for nothing. Too publics like Michigan are very expensive for OOS students.
There are other public schools much cheaper. There are large and small ivies. General comparisons are of litte value.
That said, my experience with our own state schools, among the cheapest in the US, is that they do cut corners,
make it difficult to study what you want. Privates have been more accomodating as to choice of majors and classes.
But again one should not generalize, there are states better and worse than ours,
and Ivies that may fit you better than others.
But does the school with an enrollment cap of 26 students per class have sufficient space for all interested students to take the class? Student interest in CS has exploded in recent years far faster than colleges tend to want to expand departments. A LAC experiencing such an explosion of student interest needs to choose between (a) hiring more instructors to teach the additional sections if it wants to keep class sizes small, (b) increasing class sizes, or (c) turning away some interested students because the classes are completely full.
Obviously, a student who chose the LAC for small class sizes would prefer if it did (a), but that is probably the most expensive and difficult solution. A situation like that described in http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1556885-no-calc-101-for-you.html (college makes questionable excuse to deny a new frosh into a course typically taken by new frosh) would not be desirable. So the prospective CS major may want to investigate whether the LAC is experiencing an explosion of interest in CS and, if so, how it is handling it.
Williams College has 11 computer science faculty members for a student body of ~2000. I don’t believe anyone is prevented from declaring or pursuing the major.