<p>interesteddad is writing about Brown like it has 15,000 students. To post comments about coming to Brown, specifically, because you only have one interest is essentially the antithesis of the Brown education and the Brown environment and is utter nonsense. The emphasis on the unique way we go about general education to inspire students to branch out and really receive a liberal education is something to be admired. We’ve been on the forefront of developing interdisciplinary concentrations for quite some time. Our enrollment was ~5,800 undergraduates, not 7000 as estimated above. interesteddad is attempting to inflate Swarthmore’s small courses by including sections which is hilarious.</p>
<p>Swarthmore is a great school, but you should stick to talking about what’s great about Swarthmore because you’re really totally missing the mark on Brown.</p>
<p>My bad. I should have used 6000 undergrads. The enrollment number provided by Brown on their most recent Common Data Set was 6095.</p>
<p>So, the revised number is 4100 student-classes out of 24000 student-classes are in lectures of at least 100 students. This increases the percentage of student-classes in hundred person classes at Brown from 15% to 17% for the fall of 2008. In other words, one out of every six “student-classes” taken at Brown last fall was in a lecture format of 100 or more students. this compares to one out of every 55 “student-class” combos at Swarthmore being in a lecture of 100.</p>
<p>For the record, I’ve never recommended that the orignal poster choose Swarthmore over Brown. I have no idea which would suit him or her better. I’ve said that both would be excellent choices and pointed out that there are trade-offs with both types of school having pluses and minuses. I’ve used actual data from the schools’ common data sets to correct some misinformation about financial aid and about course sizes at the two schools. I’m the one who pointed out that Swarthmore’s boutique scale education does not mean that students will never see a lecture format course or that students at a large private research university like Brown don’t see small discussion classes. My exact words were that the differences are a “matter of degree”. I had no intention of even posting in this thread until I saw the egregiously false claim that Swarthmore’s financial aid would be “mediocre” compared to Brown’s when the data clearly shows that a higher percentage of Swat’s international students receive aid and that they receive larger average aid packages.</p>
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<p>I’m not “inflating” anything. I’m the one who provided the actual hard data on courses and enrollment from the Common Data Sets. The same page of the Common Data Set asks for subsections to cover things like labs and discussion sections of lecture classes. Brown does not provide their data on this question (see page 26 of their CDS PDF file here. </p>
<p>Let’s not hold out the false premise that students at large private research universities automatically get every course they might want at a time slot that does not conflict with some other course they may want. Scheduling is a challenge that is universal. For many public universities now, it is virtually impossible to get the courses to graduate in four years in some majors. This is only becoming more accute, depending on the depth of financial cuts in response to the recession.</p>
<p>I totally agree with monydad (and Professor Burke) that, if having the broadest selection of courses in a specific field is important either for reasons of extremely focused interest or because you’ve already taken the standard college courses in during high school (as Marite’s son had done), then choosing the largest possible university with the most course offerings would be the best way to go.</p>
<p>That is not what Swarthmore is about. That’s not what Swathmore’s curriculum is about. It is about using 32 courses over eight sememsters as vehicles to teach students how to read, analyze, formulate arguments, and communicate across a range of fields (at least three science/math, at least three social studies, at least three humanities). It provides depth through the major and especially through the Honors Program, but there is never any suggestion that offering a specialist in every nook and cranny of every field is part of the offering. It’s not and students who don’t view undergrad education that way should, quite properly, look elsewhere. This approach werks well for many students. A maximum of 12 courses in your major only leaves room for a half dozen electives after the standard progression in field is completed, so it’s not like the average student needs to find ten courses on French History from 1731 to 1739. These are precisely the tradeoffs that prospective students should be thinking about. More variety and accept that one out of every six student-class combos is a 100 person lecture or less variety for a boutique-scale learning expereince where only one out of fifty-five student-class combos is a 100 person lecture and nobody ever takes more than one class that size during their eight semesters.</p>
<p>“…because you’ve already taken the standard college courses in during high school (as Marite’s son had done), then choosing the largest possible university with the most course offerings would be the best way to go”</p>
<p>In fairness, D1 also came in with substantial advanced standing. I might agree that <em>some</em> of these limitations are less likely to be encountered as severely if one is taking/repeating a year of intro courses that highly advanced high schoolers might have already completed.</p>
<p>But the type of people who are such advanced students would certainly be represented among the pool considering these two schools, and others of the limitations of a teeny, high-school sized LAC (fewer sections causing more course conflicts, some desired courses given only every other year, forced to see the same people constantly so you better like them, etc) may remain regardless.</p>
<p>If we are talking about the same “Marite’s son”, he had taken the entire basic college math sequence of courses at the highly-ranked university where he eventually enrolled. He was ready to on to the upper level and graduate level courses as a first year college student. He would have run out of courses at aliberal arts college and was a perfect example of a student Professor Burke would advise not to consider Swarthmore, because he needed to the graduate-level courses. Most high-school seniors, even gifted ones, have not already taken four or more math courses at a top-ranked university. </p>
<p>I’m not really talking about the normal advanced standing, such as students who place out of both semesters of college caculus or that sort of thing. I’m talking a student who had taken four semesters of college math courses above that level. Most students at Swarthmore (or any other elite college) come in with AP credits that place them out of intro courses in math, sciences, languages, etc. In fact, some demanding majors – such as Engineering – almost require some AP placements as a practical matter.</p>
<p>My daughter had the opposite problem. She had a lot more courses that she would have liked to have taken at Swarthmore than she had years to take them in. She always went into registration with six courses that she really wanted to take that semester and had to decide (often after attending a few classes) which four to keep on her shedule. I suspect that will be true for 99.9% of students at elite colleges or universities.</p>
<p>My daughter did not have as many as four or more math courses at a top ranked university, yet also encountered constraints. Thereby proving that the degree of advancement need not be so extensive as that for the limitations to be felt. Actually the most serious constraints, to her,were in a field she dod not study at all in high school.</p>
Well, that and the simple fact that we don’t know much about the OP’s preferences (except not “too” studious and in a reasonably interesting setting). Neither will he, I suspect, until/unless he visits.</p>
<p>Analyzing colleges on paper only gets you so far. I was very pumped for my Brown visit, since from everything I had read, it seemed like a perfect fit. I got there and was immediately turned off. The campus was extremely cramped and decidedly more urban and less attractive than I expected. Since campus beauty was a key factor in my college search, all other things being equal, Brown was scratched from the list without hesitation. </p>
<p>I ended up loving and applying to Swarthmore, on the other hand, which I visited on a whim while considering Penn.</p>
<p>That’s why the original poster, and all applicants, should evaluate his or her own individual situation and priorities. I think the Tim Burke blog essay I linked above will help students focus on curriculum issues.</p>
<p>I will say that I have run across very few Swarthmore students who felt like they were not adequately challenged to hold their academic interests for four years or not finding courses of adequate heft, especially those pursuing the honors track and directed study. If anything, the more common lament is that the academic program is too demanding and the expectation for high-level academics too high. My assessment is that, overall, it’s probably a championship-caliber course, set up with US OPEN rough, challenging pin placements, and played from the back tees. Both long hitters and short hitters who can chip and put can post a decent score.</p>
<p>I am currently a student at Swarthmore. I don’t know if these are old statistics but there are a few Intro classes that have over 100 students and a few that are close. Class size really ranges as well as teaching styles. I have had a 20 person class that was discussion based and a similar class size that was lecture based. It really comes down to the subject and professor. I took a physics class last semester that had about 96 students and Intro to Psych has over 100 students.</p>