I love University of Michigan but I feel like since the school is so large I would just a number in my classes and that the teachers wouldn’t give individual time. If I’m struggling would the teachers help?
You are talking about college not high school. So there are other ways to improve or understand besides the teacher’s help. There is always being resourceful yourself and using material available to you.There are also tutors, academic advising, peers, TAs. And professors or even "instructors but not “teachers”.
Yes but it is a very large school. What do you lose going to a large school?
I GSI for humanities classes. I will know all of my students’ names in my sections. If it’s a lecture and you’re not in my section, yes you’re going to be nameless to me unless you’re a superstar or terrible.
UNLESS you make yourself known. Go to office hours. Introduce yourself. Speak up in class.
IME, yes the professors want to help. So do the GSIs. Reach out to them.
Definitely not true. There are resources to take advantage of when you have trouble in your classes. All big lectures will have a discussion section led by a GSI (grad student) which are about 15-25 in size. In addition, all professors will have some form of office hours that you can take advantage of. The point is, you are not just a number, even in a large lecture setting.
You shouldn’t worry. I just was having a two hour chat during office hours with my lecturer for Anthro 101 yesterday (one of those 200-300 people classes) just because I was curious about something tangentially related to the course material. There’s definitely enough time and help offered, if you seek it out. I noticed that my classmates at Michigan have also generally been friendly and collaborative, so if you make some friends you can always ask them questions or plan study groups.
Also, for what it’s worth… If you’re a sophomore or higher majoring in physics or math, the whole “I’m just a number” fear is complete bullocks. Not only do all of my professors know me on a first-name basis, but I’m in a fairly popular math course and my professor, as well as a couple of professors from different sections, have personally come up to me as I was working in the math building to ask how things are going, chat, give advice, etc. If you’re fairly active and out there, I feel like there’s really no difference compared to going to a smaller school/school with a smaller department.
(Actually, having transferred from a smaller school/school with a smaller department, I’ve found Michigan to be way better. It surprised me too, given what I expected beforehand.)
In lower division courses, you will find lectures large, but supplemented with smaller discussion sections. You can learn from your peers, from the coursework, from the TA, from the Professor. Michigan also has one of the largest library systems in all of academia, and certainly a wealth of computing and other physical resources (labs, wind tunnels…). There are well over 1,000 clubs, many of them devoted to academic niches.
In some senses, the first two years of Michigan are similar to the challenges you will find in a Fortune 500 company: all of the resources are there to allow you to be a superstar, but you have to reach out to access and take advantage of those resources. This is a big part of what university is all about: learning to navigate and optimize complexity in a large organization. How to make that organization smaller if you want it to be smaller.
Branch Rickey, a Michigan graduate, said that “Luck is the residue of design.”. The better you plan, the harder you work, the more you develop your networking skills (within the bounds of civility and maintaining the social contract), the more you reach out to people, the more you will find your path intersecting with “luck”.
So, academically speaking, get out there and get luck.
It’s not like in HS. You’ll sit in a huge room and the professor won’t know your name or whether you’re present. For him/her to know, you’d have to sit in the first 2 rows, in front of the lectern/podium. You don’t hang out at the end of class asking question, you hustle and get to your next class which may be 15mn away. Then, the professors has 2 hours in the week dedicated to talking with you about the lectures, your readings, anything you didn’t understand. You have to come prepared, with your work highlighted, and your questions written down. Within the first 2 weeks, it’s a good idea to go and introduce yourself. And that large lecture will be broken down in “sections”,smaller groups lead that an instructor who’s not a professor but a graduate instructor and who’s been chosen to teach that section and assist the professor in the lecture. Because that “section” is small, the GSI will know your name and all kinds of things about preparation, your participation, ability to think on your feet, etc.
When students say they feel “like a number”, it’s because they don’t know anyone in their classes and haven’t had time to exchange phone numbers. They may be shy and not know how to come up to random people. They wish someone cared whether they’re in class or not. They don’t go to office hours. They don’t have friends and don’t know how to join a study group. Depending on your department and your personality, it can feel alienating or exhilarating to be part of a large class at a large university.
I think I want a smaller school with a mentorship feel
That’s fine too, @elena3142. You should look into liberal arts colleges.
@eyo777 that wouldnt make sense considering I’m an engineering major
While it is true that Michigan is large, it has the resources to make it a personal experience if you make the effort. The Michigan faculty generally try hard to help students through office hours and after call, and GSI’s are a highly knowledgeable bunch on their way to becoming stars in their respective fields. Students seeking extra help will always find it at Michigan.
Michigan Tech? Just a thought if you want a smaller school.
I was an engineering student at UT-Austin. There were 48,000 students at the school when I attended. I never felt like “just a number.” I sat in the front of each class and made an effort to go to each professor’s office hours. My FAVORITE class was American History. There were 350 students in the class, but the prof was a natural storyteller and I couldn’t wait to go to his lectures. We had some great conversations during his office hours - he tried to convince me to switch majors from engineering to history, ha! If I had decided to sign up for a smaller class, I would have missed out on a wonderful experience.
I tell students that attending a big school is like living in a big city with many cool neighborhoods. You don’t see the entire student body at one time (except maybe at football games, which are really fun). You hang out in one or two buildings most of the time when you’re an upperclassman. And there are always so many things to do and opportunities to explore. Lots of research going on, too!
@AverageJoe22 thank you for the suggestion but it isn’t prestigious enough for me. I’m out of state btw I’m from Oregon
@MaineLonghorn why as an engineering student were you taking US history?
Elena, Engineers must take non technical courses in order to graduate. It is not unusual for Engineers to take a few courses in the Social Sciences and Humanities.
That being said, considering your concerns, you may be best served looking into universities like Carnegie Mellon and Rice. Larger universities aren’t for everyone.
Furthermore, several LACs offer excellent engineering educations. Franklin Olin, Harvey Mudd, Rose Hulman, Cooper Union and Bucknell to name a few.
Every school you mentioned is on my list.
After reading many hundreds of posts on various threads, the one word that jumps out at me is “fit”. Defining “fit” is pretty elusive, but it is when your “feel” for how you will engage with a school and enjoy being there and your academic progress all mesh in a favorable way. Everybody defines and experiences this measure differently.
“fit” is hard to define because it is somewhat an a posteriori measure of satisfaction: “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” <== Kierkegaard
Thus far, your posts seem to suggest that a smaller less socially/organizationally challenging school would offer the better “fit” for you than a large school like Michigan. My take is that you should heed that inner voice and consider a smaller school. The chief advantages of Michigan are size and breadth, but for you those measures may be “bugs” and not “features”. If you are very focused, a smaller school with a standout program in your hoped for niche may be the way to go (in that you won’t be prone to take advantage of the breadth anyway, so it will add no delta to your overall experience).
So, consider going small…it may pay dividends as far as your perception of “fit” is concerned.
Yes the problem is a lot of schools that have aerospace engineering programs are very large.