I find the part about Harvard to be a bit ironic considering many of the undergrad classes my HS classmates took for the first 2 years there were on the large size(100-300+ students). The summer stats course for Econ majors I took there was ~300+ and was held in a large lecture hall at the Science Center.
While I had no issues with it despite preferring the much smaller class sizes at my LAC(largest I’ve had was 40, smallest I’ve had was 2 with most averaging ~12-15 students), I wouldn’t consider Harvard undergrad…especially in the first 2 years to be “intimate”.
Also, some Ivies have much larger classes such as the popular Intro to Psych course at Cornell which an older cousin took in the '90s…~1500 students in a lecture hall so large they needed a small army of TAs and several TV screens so students could see the Prof lecturing.
Harvard does have their houses, which may be intimate, but in general, the Harvard student body isn’t known to be particularly tight/intimate (compared to other Ivies/equivalents like Dartmouth/Princeton/Yale/Rice/Caltech).
And with the UToronto colleges, you may actually get more small classes first couple years at a college at Toronto (or a giant American public that has an honors college or something like it) than first couple years at H (depending on major).
Whether the Harvard undergrad experience was tight really depended on the individual house and the individual residents during that time period. For instance, HS friends at Winthrop found their experience with house members to be tight whereas others found it to be no different from being in an anonymous dorm at a large state U.
My own experience dorming one summer at Harvard also found architecture of the house concerned to play a critical part. The design of the older houses such as Winthrop seem to facilitate more social interaction and intimacy among residents of the house compared with say…Leverett Towers which is designed in a manner that while the suitemates on each floor could have close social interaction, the vibe is no different than living in an anonymous large apartment complex.
Housing tip for Harvard freshman and admits…if close social interactions with others in your “house” is important…especially beyond one’s own room/suitemates on the same floor/section, I don’t recommend Leverett Towers for an upper-class “house” unless you’re exceedingly outgoing and don’t mind putting up with waiting for the elevators to visit different floors, wings of the dorm, or to spontaneously have hangouts with friends.
Wasn’t as much of an issue for me, but it was an issue for several summer classmates at that particular “house”.
@PurpleTitan if your mention of skilled trades is in reference to needing more than a high school diploma, in Ontario at least, getting your trade ticket has an in class component as well. It’s not just strictly on the job apprenticeship. Granted you get paid during your apprenticeship.
@ShrimpBurrito Aw, heck, I was trying to stay out of it. I should mention, however, that the 84000 student number for University of Toronto is misleading. There are three campuses for U of T and a lot of graduate students. The St. George campus has 43K undergrads. UCLA has 31K undergrads, UCB has 29K, Univ. Central Florida has 55K, UTA has 40K. U of T counts medical, law and other professional students as undergrad students.
The Faculty of Arts and Science has roughly (couldn’t find official numbers) 25K undergraduate students. Engineering, nursing, music, education and several others have their own faculties and look after their own students.
With regards to the college system at U of T, the St. George campus’ Faculty of Arts and Science (25K students) is a federation of 7 residential colleges. Each college handles admission, residence, financial matters and certain course enrollment functions for its students. The college that I attended has a total of 1600 students enrolled. Way back in the dark ages before residence was guaranteed to all first year students, I lived in one of the two residences of my college for all 4 years. There were 425 of us in residence.
In the vast majority of cases, the colleges don’t run the classes. Those are run by the faculty. The largest lecture hall seats about 1300 students. The average class size is about 180 for first year. DS is currently a junior and his classes have between 50-80 students. He is also doing independent research with a prof this semester, so he has a class of one.
Is the college system strictly for the purpose of residence then or do the students who commute to campus still belong to a college? Do the students from all the colleges take courses together according to their faculty and major?
What proportion of of your sons classes have been taught by sessional instructors vs professors and does he feel it makes a difference?
Did your son participate in any of the special first year programs and if so did he enjoy it?
50-80 students for a 3rd year course still seems rather large to me, even if there are smaller tutorials/labs. I don’t remember having that many students in my 3rd year classes at UWO when I attended in the late 80’s but I know that many changes to undergraduate education have occurred since then. It maybe quite possible that that is the norm there now as well. Of all the provinces however, the universities in Ontario seem to have the highest student/faculty ratios.
^ It depends on your major, but even at those expensive American privates like Harvard and MIT, many people will take classes with 50-80 students in the class during junior and senior (3rd and 4th) years.
That’s probably the first time I’ve heard Harvard described as intimate. It’s generally thought of as a place without a lot of handholding. You can have a great experience there, but you have to do the work to make it happen. I’m saying this as a graduate. Yes the residential college system helps. Picking one of the smaller majors also helps. But you can easily spend your first year in giant lecture classes if you don’t choose wisely.
I had small classes by taking a language, a freshman seminar, seminars offered by tutors at my house (not professors, but they were fabulous). I think the entry way system of organizing suites and the lack of shared bathrooms makes meeting people on the floors harder, but we had a huge basement with a pottery studio, a darkroom, squash courts, pinball machines, a ping pong table, a fuss ball table and a student run grill where a lot of socializing happened. There was also a junior common room with the daily paper and a small library in the dorm.
My niece is doing one of those first year programs at the U of Toronto and seems very happy with it.
Thanks @mathmom, just goes to show that the reality of a school is not always the way it is perceived. I always pictured Harvard as having smaller more intimate classes and a tight knit student body.
At the moment DS15 attends a congregated AP program at our neighbourhood school. In grades 9 & 10 they take an accelerated pre-AP curriculum in their 5 core subjects leading up to the actual AP classes of their choice in grades 11 & 12 (mostly 12). The program was very competitive to get into and there are about 85 students per grade (his grade is the first cohort). As a cohort they support and encourage each other. It goes without saying that they are all high achieving and strongly academically focused and just a tad bit competitive. It really works for him and I think a similar environment for him would be ideal for university. I just worry he will get lost at a really big school but I’m not sure he will get the same level of academic rigour at our smaller institutions as he would at the big research schools.
All student in Arts and Science belong to a college. For my college, non-residence students have a very small meal plan that allows them to eat in the dining hall of their college. They can buy more credits for the dining hall if they wish. There is a non-residence council that plans events for non-residents.
Students in other faculties, such as the Faculty of Applied Science (engineering), that are first year university students, are welcome to live in one of the colleges’ residences as well.
Yes.
To the best of my knowledge, all of his classes have been taught by a professor or full time lecturer. The full time lecturer is a PhD who teaches full time within the university, but does not have research responsibilities like a professor would. DS has had teaching assistants for tutorials who were grad students. The TAs were supervised by the course professor.
DS is in humanities. I was a STEM student. My experience was the same, except my first year chemistry course which was taught by a grad student.
He took two of the first year seminar courses. He applied for one of the “Ones” programs, but was not accepted. His worst grade so far was in one of the seminar courses - it was taught by an experienced prof who hadn’t taught undergrads before. Between his high expectations and DS’ freshman first term lack of experience, ds didn’t have a clue as to expectations and ended up with a B.
I was a TA at U of T in the early 90’s. The 3rd year lab course that I TA’d was required for a popular major and had 72 spots that were full for the 4 years I TA’d (24 in each section).
The 4th year courses that are in DS’ major have a maximum of 20 students.
re #40:
“Also, some Ivies have much larger classes such as the popular Intro to Psych course at Cornell which an older cousin took in the '90s…~1500 students in a lecture hall so large they needed a small army of TAs and several TV screens so students could see the Prof lecturing”
That course often gets trotted out as the poster-child for large classes. While the quote is all true, in fairness I should mention that this class was not a required course. It got to be that size because the professor spent virtually his entire time focusing on it, and he was a great lecturer. He made the material come to life, so they say. The course, and the prof, were virtually always among the most popular and highly evaluated on campus. So much for large courses always being considered “bad” by the consumers. It was in fact considered among the best courses on campus, by its consumers.
Not that I am generally advocating for huge classes. I had intro biology classes in that same lecture hall, and they were horrible.
But it kind of depends, IMO. I took intro calculus there in something like a 200+ seat classroom. With a professor who was a great lecturer and crafted a well-organized, rigorous course. More recently from what I gleaned on CC they turned that course into multiple 30-person sections, all taught by different instructors. No doubt so they could look better in US News rankings. I wonder how much better the newer format classes really are. Our class was great. I learned a lot of math there, at a high level. I doubt that all the other instructors they got to deliver those 30-person classes were uniformly as good as the prof for my one lecture class was.
Not every class is suitable, or optimal, for a seminar-style discussion. If lecture is the best format to convey material, then to some extent the number of fellow students who are also listening along with you to the lecture may not really matter that much. And you may not want the prof’s lecture to be interrupted by every person’s little question which may not really be that prescient and could be addressed by the prof or a TA afterwards.
When I got out of my big school I resented the big classes, and I thought that small schools were the way to go. Until my two girls had bad experiences at LACs. And then one of them actually transferred to my old school and had a great experience there. Now I feel there are good and bad aspects to each experience. I think maybe D2 did it best, attend the smaller school the first two years then transfer to the larger one. But who knows… I don’t presume to know any more, as a blanket matter at least.