Class sizes and relationships

College Search & Selection
1

<p>Ok, so I started my dual enrollment course a few weeks ago at the local state uni, and the class is large - 40 students, give or take. I really like the prof, and I want to get to know him, but I don't know if he'll ever learn my name. I don't know if it's considered a "lecture" or a discussion class, but he does most, if not all, of the talking.</p>

<p>There are so many questions that I want to ask him!!!! I'm just going to email him, because if I asked all of those questions in class, I would feel odd, only because I'm not sure how to conduct "lecture ettiquette.'"</p>

<p>This is a state uni with more than 20,000 students, and it's a 204 level class. Is this typical with unis this size? The profs not knowing your name?</p>

<p>Would I get more attention at a research uni? LAC?</p>

<p>In case you're wondering about my questions, they're about field work.</p>

2

<p>The prof has office hours. If at all possible, go see him in person during office hours. That will be the best way to get to know him and for him to remember your name.</p>

3

<p>40 is not that large. Most profs would learn your name over time. Office hours. I think asking 1 question during class every so often would be fine.</p>

4

<p>For some people, including me, 40 is indeed a large class size.</p>

<p>Yes, you’re far less likely to have classes that big at a small liberal arts college, especially advanced ones.</p>

<p>If this is important to you, I would advise you to focus your search on smaller schools.</p>

5

<p>I go to an LAC with extremely small class sizes, and I know all my professors personally. If you want personal attention, you have to pick a school with smaller class sizes. Professors are still human, so they have less time to spend on individuals if the class size is larger.</p>

6

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/708190-avg-class-size.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/708190-avg-class-size.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

7

<p>40 is not large for a university. If that’s the way you’re leaning than you need to get used to going to office hours to get your questions answered and develop a relationship with the professors. My son is a freshman at a LAC and his largest class had 20 students. Even so, if the students don’t participate, the professor may know who the student is but won’t necessarily developed a relationship with him.</p>

8

<p>Each school’s common data set section I.3 gives a fairly detailed breakdown of classes by size. With very few exceptions–far fewer than is commonly realized—students at research universities will on average spend a LOT more time in large classes than students at LACs. </p>

<p>Here’s the breakdown from the common data sets for a leading LAC (Haverford), a leading private research university (Princeton), and a leading public university (UCLA)</p>

<p>LAC: Haverford
Class size: # of classes (% of total)
2-9: 114 (34.2%)
10-19: 143 (42.9%)
20-29: 47 (14.1%)
30-39: 22 (6.6%)
40-49: 6 (1.8%)
50-99: 1 (0.3%)
100+: 0 (0%)
Total 333 </p>

<p>Private research university: Princeton
Class size: # of classes (% of total)
2-9: 226 (27.0%)
10-19: 370 (44.3%)
20-29: 87 (10.4%)
30-39: 37 (4.4%)
40-49: 22 (2.6%)
50-99: 56 (6.7%)
100+: 38 (4.5%)
Total 836</p>

<p>Public research university: UCLA
Class size: # of classes (% of total)
2-9: 469 (23.3%)
10-19: 553 (27.5%)
20-29: 333 (16.6%)
30-39: 131 (6.5%)
40-49: 84 (4.2%)
50-99: 208 (10.4%)
100+: 231 (11.5%)
Total 2,009</p>

<p>Now notice that Haverford and Princeton look pretty similar in percentage of small classes: 77.1% of the classes at Haverford have fewer than 20 students, while at Princeton 71.3% are in that “small” size range. But look at the other end of the scale: Haverford has only 1 class with 50+ students, or 0.3% of the total, while 11.2% of Princeton’s classes are in that “large” size range. Here’s the part that’s often overlooked: It’s not so much the number of small classes, but the number of large classes that determines what fraction of their time students spend in large classes. Each small class is, by definition, small, serving only a few students, while each big class has, by definition, many students registered for it. It takes more than 5 small classes (<20) to equal the number of students registered for a single class of 100+. So if a school has, say, 6 times as many small classes as large ones, that doesn’t mean students are spending 6 times as much time in small classes as large ones; it probably means they’re spending roughly equal amounts of time in large as in small classes, because there are so many more students enrolled in each large class. I won’t bore you with the math, but if you assume that the size of the average class in each size range is the mid-point of that range, and if you further assume that the average class of 100+ has 125 students, you get the following:</p>

<p>% of student time spent in small classes (< 20):
Haverford 55.3%
Princeton 34.0%
UCLA 15.4%</p>

<p>% of student time spend in large classes (50+):
Haverford 1.5%
Princeton 44.1%
UCLA 61.5%</p>

<p>Notice that Princeton students are actually spending more time in large classes (50+) than in small ones (<20). Princeton students spend nearly half their time in large classes; Haverford students almost none. Of course, students at the public university, UCLA, spend even more time in large classes and relatively little in small ones, but to my mind, at least, the difference between Haverford and Princeton on this score is even more striking than the difference between Princeton and UCLA. If you want small classes, attend a LAC, not a research university. (There are a handful of exceptions).</p>

9

<p>^ this makes much sense! I’ll keep my smaller schools in mind. :slight_smile: My prof went to UMichigan for undergrad and he said it’s easy to get lost amidst all of the students and teachers.</p>

10

<p>I think students are in more large classes than you would think from the common data set description. I remember as an undergraduate at UT we had to have at least 10 students for a class to make. If that’s still the case, none of the 205 classes size 2-9 are undergraduate classes. For graduate classes we had to have at least 4.</p>

11

<p>College classes tend to be either a discussion led by the professor or a lecture given by the professor. And class size is a major determiner as to which any given class will be. In my experience the border falls around a class size of 12. Much beyond 12 and most classes will switch from discussion to lecture. </p>

<p>Which is why I never understood why a class of 40 or 50 is seen by some as better than a class size of say 200. Either way you are sitting there listening to a lecture. It makes little or no difference whether you are sitting there next to 49 other classmates or 199 other classmates. It’s still much the same experience.</p>

12

<p>^ you’re right!!! Yes, 40 is a large class (but certianly not hundreds), but the prof is still doing most if not all of the talking. It’s so different from high school…he talks so fast and he says so much…despite how interesting the material is, it’s easy to get lost.</p>

<p>Our class is supposed to be 3 hours long, one night a week, but last time we got out about 30 minutes early (we’re supposed to have a break but we decided to shorten the class by not having one.) I’m not sure how long the break is supposed to be, however.</p>

13

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<p>Yes and no. I think a lot depends on what you study, and how important it is to you to take small classes. In a popular major like poli sci, psych, or pretty much anything that would be a standard pre-med path, you’ll end up in a lot of large classes. But I was a philosophy major at Michigan. All my classes in my major were small, and I got to know the professors very well. And philosophy is sort of a medium-sized major at Michigan; there are many that are smaller.</p>

14

<p>As big schools house many majors in their own building with their own library and lounge you usually can easily get to know pretty much everyone in the dept. The dept becomes your college within the university.</p>