I was fortunate enough to be admitted to Bowdoin and Yale and I’m weighing which one to attend. I have always thrived best in small classes.
I would have assumed that this would give the advantage to Bowdoin over Yale, but when I looked at Bowdoin’s actual class sizes, I see that the 1000 and 2000 level courses in subjects that interest me most (government, psych, econ, soc/anthropology) all have enrollments of 35 or 50 students. And they don’t seem to have separate discussion sections. A student at the admissions office did tell me that her intro to psych class had 50 students but that sometimes instead of lectures, the professor would break the class into smaller discussion groups that were led by an upperclassman. I thought these courses would have a lecture and a discussion section each week, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
I’m confused. I know that Bowdoin has a great reputation, but from what I understand, except for freshman seminars, basically all my classes in those subject areas for the first couple of years would likely have at least 35 students and no professor-led discussions. Can that be right? Can someone set me straight on this?
Also, does anyone know how this compares to Yale? I know that Yale has lots of large lecture classes, but I also see lots of discussion sections that are run by doctoral candidates, which seems better than ones run by undergraduates.
If I want to be able to have a chance to talk about the material from class, which college will get me that? Bowdoin or Yale?
Hi! I can’t speak for Yale, but I’m a current Bowdoin first-year, and have taken many small classes. Part of that could be my areas of interest, which differ slightly from yours, but the largest class I’ve been in has been around 30 students - and that is much, much larger than some of my others - I’ve been enrolled in two classes with less than 10 students. I also found that the large® lecture class did not lose any of the interactiveness of a smaller class. It’s still engaging and interesting, and the professor makes time to talk to students who are confused outside of class. Certainly large intro classes exist, but that will be the case at any school, and I’m sure Yale’s will be larger. The professors at Bowdoin also probably have more free time to talk to you since the students are the main focus, not research (though most do research over the summer, not trying to make it sound as though there are no research opportunities available)! Obviously I’m biased, but I believe you’ll find overall smaller classes at Bowdoin.
Government is the most popular major at Bowdoin so you picked the worst-case scenario. I’ll take it one step further – not only are many of the government classes more crowded, they are hard to get into until you’re a major. They discourage enrollment by making many of the government classes not eligible to fulfill any of the college’s distribution requirements. And in your first two years you need to not be picky about which Gov courses you end up in because you probably won’t get your first or second choice. My son is wrapping up his Sophomore year and has yet to successfully get into any of the Gov classes he’s tried for both years.
So if you are focused on Gov that may be an issue.
That said, my son’s had classes in other subjects with as few as 7 students and most of his classes are capped at 16. So on average sizes are small. The trouble with most LAC’s that have no grad students to run sectionals of a larger course is students don’t conveniently self-distribute proportionately to the majors offered by the college. And because trending interests shift over time, colleges end up with classes in some subjects they can’t fill and large waiting lists in others. For example, Bowdoin like many of it’s peers, can’t keep up with the growing demand for Computer Science, the fastest growing major on campus.