<p>Can a current Dartmouth student tell me how big/small their classes have been so far? I've always thought that Dartmouth had smaller classes than its peers (ex. Columbia or Penn) but I've heard that was a rumor lately that it was false. So how big are the introductory and advanced classes?</p>
<p>It really depends, but yes, in general most of our classes are small. Out of the 6 classes I’ve been in so far, only 1 of them has had more than 30 students, and that large class was an outliers, as I’ll explain below. I don’t remember the exact percentage (you can find it on the admissions page) but it’s upward of 70% of our classes are fewer than 20 students. In some introductory courses you’ll get a big class, like at any school (read intro bio, chem, gov and econ). However, as you go to higher level courses, or explore the less pre-determined majors (almost every freshman that comes in has decided they are pre-med, pre-business, or pre-law, which they often decide means they must be a bio/econ/gov major), you find much smaller classes. The one big class I have had was bio 11 (the intro bio course). I also happened to take it freshman fall, when 1/4th of my class believed they were pre-med and decided they needed to take bio 11 immediately (I admit, this was me too). However, I also had a class freshman fall with 9 students, including myself. I would say the huge class is far more the exception than the rule. Also, many intro courses such as intro languages are quite small (my Italian 1 class this term only had 12 people in it.) I suppose for a view of how my classes are I have 1 class of 12, one of 16 and one of about 30, and I’m a second term freshman. This also allows you to get to know your profs really well (all of mine know me by name, and I honestly haven’t made a huge effort to make myself stand out). While I can’t comment on our relation to our peers too deeply, I know that the small classes, and attentive, caring professors who actually seem like they’re interested in teaching, was one of the major factors that caused me to choose D over some other choices. Again, if you have any further questions, feel free to PM me.
-spunaugle</p>
<p>My classes have been about the same size as spunaugle’s. My classes had 75, 30, and 17 students freshman fall… and my classes this winter have 41, 16, and 12 students. Next term, my classes have 26, 25, and 14 students.
A disclaimer to this is that I took Writing 5 in the fall and my seminar this winter, which are capped to 18 and 16 students, respectively. Spunaugle and I are also in the same Italian class with 12 students in it… although Italian 2 has 26…
But, like he said, it really depends on how in-demand your classes are. My 75-person class was Socy 1, but it didn’t feel nearly as large as it was. And yes, in my experience, the profs make the effort to know their students, but again… I’ve only been here for two terms. I know several seniors who have super-close relationships with profs that they had for one term in their sophomore year or something…</p>
<p>Haha actually coteee they’ve decided 26 is too large for an Italian 2 class and are adding another section. So Italian 2 will be roughly the same size as 1.</p>
<p>I saw that… now there are two 13-person classes.</p>
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Wow. That’s cool</p>