<p>What is the typical class size for courses at Duke?
is the campus small(ie. can you EASILY walk from one end of the campus to the other?)</p>
<p>merci---------</p>
<p>Class sizes are pretty small (25 or less), with notable exceptions (usually intro classes like orgo). On each campus you can get around by walking with ease. East Campus is 2 miles from West though so most people take the bus to get between them.</p>
<p>Fiske's guide to college states "75% of all classes are 25 students or fewer"</p>
<p>Oh --theres two campuses? Do students usually have to go to both in order to take classes required for their majors..or is it a branch campus kinda thing?</p>
<p>no.</p>
<p>freshmen live on east campus, upperclassmen live on west campus. it isnt a branch campus thing. however, some departments (lit, history, womens studies, art history, philosophy, etc.) are housed departmentally on east, so while not all of your classes in those disciplines will be on east, many will, and your professors offices very likely could be there as well. therefore, once you move to west sophomore year you may never need to go to east for class, just as freshman year, although you live on east, you may never take classes there (or if you were a friend of mine first semester, you would take alll your classes on east).</p>
<p>however-- dukes classes are set up in that even if you have classes in two consecutive time slots, you have enough time to take the bus between them or to walk from one end of campus to another.</p>
<p>Just to clarify: When we say there are two campuses, it's actually just two different sides of the same campus. They are separated by a 1.8 mile road and buses constantly run between them (about an 7 minute ride). You could really walk if you wanted to.</p>
<p>I walked between East and West when the weather was nice; it takes about 15-20 minutes.</p>
<p>My class sizes next semester are 8, 10, 13, 15, and 1 (ind. study). For specific class sizes, see
<a href="http://www.siss.duke.edu/schedule%5B/url%5D">http://www.siss.duke.edu/schedule</a></p>
<p>Most of the classes are VERY small(exactly what i'm looking for) compared to PSU classes. </p>
<p>warb- what's your major?</p>
<p>Are the basic intro classes just as small?</p>
<p>basic intro classes are not usually small unless they are specifically designed so. </p>
<p>For example:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Freshmen seminar or special topic intro seminars tend to be small since that’s what the class is designed for</p></li>
<li><p>Popular majors and basic sciences have large lectures, classes like econ 51, bio 25/26/103/118, chem 31/34/151/152, egr53, etc. </p></li>
<li><p>Math department likes to break large intro classes into different sections numbering from 30-50 students. Each section is taught by a different lecturer but all sections take the same block final. AFAIK, it’s the only department to do that. </p></li>
<li><p>Many large intro classes will have recitation and lab sections that range from 20-30 people led by graduate/undergrad TAs or different professors (physics)</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Classes are pretty small, aside from intro lectures, which are around 80-100 people but can go to 300 or so, depending on the class. Honestly though, a lecture’s a lecture and it doesn’t really matter if you have 80 or 800 people. The big lectures have smaller recitation groups of about 20 people working with a grad student to answer questions. The seminars are all pretty small, about 8-12 people.</p>
<p>so would you say that students do get to know their professors well if they make the effort…similar to a liberal arts college?</p>
<p>
**</p>
<p>Yes… Sometimes without even trying. In one of my larger classes last semester (50 students), the professor knew everyone’s name in a week. My classes have 5, 5, 13, and 25 students this semester, and we get to know the professors pretty well.</p>
<p>Many students also take advantage of a program Duke offers called FLunch. FLunch is an opportunity for you to go out to eat lunch or dinner with your professors for free. Duke pays for it. It’s a great way to meet your professors (especially if you are in those rare largeee classes like orgo or intro psychology).</p>
<p>oh wow…thank you sooo much!!! now i really hope i get accepted!</p>
<p>Hey, I was wondering if in classes only a certain amount of A’s, B’s, C’s, etc are given out. For example, in a intro class with 200 people, is it usually that only 50 or so kids get the A? how does all of that stuff play out?</p>
<p>I would think that if a student deserved an A they received one… I don’t think that a’s are just given out to a certain amount of students…but the class with a larger number of people (as I would imagine) would be more competitive.</p>
<p>What ballerduke is talking about is curving grades. In most of the classes I was in 20-25% of the students could get A’s (that was the max, so no more, but there could be less). This is to combat any sort of grade inflation that might occur.</p>
<p>Some of my classes had averages of 60% so if you scored a 75-80 you had an A.</p>
<p>What most people don’t consider when they think of curving is that curves are usually not just artificial constraints. You can’t just make a curve out of nothing (unless the teacher is just a jerk, which is not normally the case at Duke), it has to be based on a distribution of some kind. </p>
<p>That means it’s generally not correct to say that “____ class only gives out so many A’s.” We aren’t talking about giving out hershey’s bar or something like that. Instead, it would be more fair to say that ideally, the teacher is responsible for making assignments and tests that will result in a normal distribution of grades in a class containing a random sample of the student population.</p>
<p>Practically speaking, this might mean that a significant portion of a test for example will be questions that you can answer just by knowing the material and those will be answered correctly by a majority of student. These questions are responsible for setting the location of the median of the distribution. However, a smaller sample of questions will be designed to test whether you can synthesize solutions to new problems based on that knowledge. In that case, the latter questions will truly differentiate the students and result in the shape of the “curve” that students often speak of. </p>
<p>In any case, my point is that having the mentality that “curving” means the teacher will “hand out” grades based on minute and statistically insignificant differences in grades is usually incorrect.</p>
<p>SBR I know what you are saying, and I agree with you, but some teachers do have set rules.</p>
<p>Some entire programs actually have set rules (not in undergrad). Fuqua’s rule (now it is hard to test if professors all follow this or not) is that no more than 25% of the students can score an SP (4.0 on GPA scale). And it follows from that.</p>
<p>So while I agree with what you are saying, there are classes at Duke with strict rules. Now when this happens, like you said, it is the professors responsibility to create assignments that should results in normal like distributions.</p>
<p>atl_living: I’m not disputing that there are rules about grade distributions, however, I just wanted to dispel the notion that grades are handed out arbitrarily and that teachers impose a draconian quota. That is simply not the case. If 40 people made the preset cut for an A out of a class of 100 and the quota is 25%, I doubt the teacher will hand out 25 A’s and give B’s to the other 15. On a related note, in many of my classes, these cutoff are already known early in the semester. </p>
<p>In the end, the grade one gets is really the grade that one earns, quota or no quota.</p>