<p>Ok, so recently someone told me that classes at Stanford are taught largely by TA's, grad students, etc. A student might only have a real professors about 6 times when at Stanford. I'm curious to see if this is somewhat true or completely false. Personally, I am skeptical, but I want to hear from a direct source.</p>
<p>I just finished my freshman year with a schedule full of big lectures, which makes sense, since a lot of them were introductory courses. They were all taught by professors.</p>
<p>Each huge intro lecture will have a section component. Section is taught by TA’s (undergrads and grad students) and TF’s (doctoral students). Section is used to help clarify and practice topics discussed during lecture. </p>
<p>I don’t know where you got your source from, but I’m sure many other top private schools have huge intro lectures. In any case, when you get into higher level courses, classes get smaller. And as a frosh/soph you have the option of taking introductory seminars, which are capped at 15 students. I was in a class that had 4 students. The five of us sat around a table twice a week, watched films, discussed readings, and ate bagels. ( : I was in another class that had 9 students. And yet another class that had 13 students, which included hands-on laboratory work.</p>
<p>Stanford has a lot of world-class faculty to go around. And they are often very approachable and willing to teach undergrads. Stanford has a 6.2 to 1 student to faculty ratio.</p>
<p>thanks so much!!!</p>
<p>To add on to what cardinal2014 said, it’s mandatory at Stanford that a professor oversee each class. Almost all classes are actually taught by professors, though grad students sometimes guest-lecture. In the extremely rare cases where the bulk of the class sessions are not taught by a professor (although I’ve never had a class that wasn’t taught by a prof), the class is still overseen by a professor, who designs the curriculum, meets with students, etc.</p>
<p>
To clarify, most TAs are grad students. Only a few departments allow undergrads to TA. I was also under the impression TFs were postdocs. </p>
<p>Now, there are consulting professors, professor emereti, lecturers, associate professors, assistant professors, and (full) professors. In my experiences, the non-tenure track professors have often been the best (they aren’t hired for research, but rather for their teaching skills and/or field expertise). </p>
<p>The statistic could be that one might only have a (full) professor for six classes when at Stanford. I would bet it would be higher, but who knows? Here are some stats to dig through:</p>
<p>[Faculty:</a> Stanford University Facts](<a href=“http://facts.stanford.edu/faculty.html]Faculty:”>http://facts.stanford.edu/faculty.html)</p>
<p>After two years, I have taken 24 lecture-style classes. Every single one was taught by a professor. Were all those professors great lecturers? No. Actually, I would have preferred a TA lecturer in one or two of those classes (and not because I couldn’t understand the professor, but because he/she was actually crummy at teaching). But the majority were fantastic.</p>
<p>thanks again everyone for all this info</p>