<p>I transferred here, so I guess I am lucky enough to have a basis of comparison with another school.</p>
<p>To tell you the truth, I was rather disappointed in this aspect when I got to Harvard. I found that classes were much larger than where I came from (which was a major univ. not a liberal arts college), and that grad students were more prevalent. And I will also say that being taught by grad students or in large groups isn't nearly as enjoyable as having real faculty in small classes. So, yes, I think this is a strong aspect to consider when deciding where to go. But then again, most of my friends who I talk to have have been here since freshman year don't think there is a problem. It is only really amongst some of my transfer friends where we perceive a problem - and I guess this is because we have each spent a year (or two) at other colleges with better direct faculty involvement in undergraduate education.</p>
<p>cosar - looking at the enrollment stats, I was surprised to see how many people are in single-student classes! are there really so many courses that only one person is taking??</p>
<p>Most of the single student course enrollments in the link I provided are upper level graduate courses with a single grad student - probably some kind of research project. </p>
<p>But there are at least a couple of ways that an undergrad can take a single student course with a professor. The first is to do a senior honors thesis - where you have a professor as your thesis advisor and typically meet with the professor once a week (I had a senior professor as my thesis advisor who was considered one of the two or three leading experts in the world on the topic on which I was writing - we met every week for an hour or two through my senior year). The second is to do a supervised research course - you line up a professor to sponsor it and then just do it. I did two of these as an undergrad. My son has a supervised research course lined up for next year with a professor with whom he has become friends, and will also be doing a senior thesis, so he will be getting a fair amount of individual attention. He's also had a number of small enrollment courses this year as a junior. It tends to be easier to do mostly small enrollment courses as an upperclassmen once the intro courses are out of the way.</p>
<p>I'm an engineering student and all my classes have been taught by professors. Sections are held by TF's and attendance is usually not mandatory. I have no problems/questions in my courses so I don't even attend the sections.</p>
<p>"To tell you the truth, I was rather disappointed in this aspect when I got to Harvard. I found that classes were much larger than where I came from (which was a major univ. not a liberal arts college), and that grad students were more prevalent. And I will also say that being taught by grad students or in large groups isn't nearly as enjoyable as having real faculty in small classes...It is only really amongst some of my transfer friends where we perceive a problem - and I guess this is because we have each spent a year (or two) at other colleges with better direct faculty involvement in undergraduate education."</p>
<p>Actually, as a fellow transfer student, I think the problem largely lies in the particular department you are in. Core classes are always a problem...they're going to be big no matter what. </p>
<p>Departmental classes are a different story. I interact pretty regularly with my music professors, including several rather high profile names (including visitors). Had I went to a small liberal arts college, I would never have had the same opportunity. </p>
<p>The department is small however, with only about 60-80 total undergrads. On the other hand, I'm also a minor (secondary field) in government, and those classes are only slightly smaller than core classes; the situation there is more akin to transferapp07's descriptions. </p>
<p>harvard09 presents a third point-of-view: as typical in some science/math courses, sections are not required. </p>
<p>So are there trade offs? Yep. It depends on what you want. And also depends on your intended major. Smaller departments will give you considerably more attention. That's a fact...and that's true anywhere.</p>
<p>I take mainly science classes, and these have a tendency to be large - in the humanities there tend to be more opportunities for smaller classes taught exclusively by faculty than there are in the sciences.</p>
<p>I'm a science major and I think have struck a nice balance between large (100+ person) classes and smaller (20 or less) classes.
You have to take one or two pre-med classes per semester; those are going to be large. I balance it out by taking small departmental english, archaeology, music, film studies, and psychology courses for my other classes. After 6 semesters, I have always had at least one class that was 20 students or fewer and was taught by a full professor. You can match your schedule to what you want.</p>
<p>Omg, I just re-read that and I haven't written anything less coherent since freshman year of college. Apologies apologies, feel free to take aim and fire away at the previous post (I just got in from 18 mile run, I'm running the boston marathon, so my brain is le fried right now).</p>
<p>So the only problem with being taught by grad students is that you have to have a good one and it's hard to switch sections. I'm having that trouble in Ec1010b right now (macroeconometrics). I love most of my TFs, I think it's a great system, especially since they're approachable and it allows the professor to remain your ally, but you need to learn how to game the system.</p>
<p>For Ec, I'm just sucking up the bad TF because I feel like I can learn the material either way, but for my international relations class, I asked my friends what TFs were good and invented a scheduling conflict to change out of my (horrible) one. Sometimes it comes to that.</p>
<p>I transferred from a tiny liberal arts college, and I felt that I got all the professor contact I wanted at Harvard. It wasn't critical to me to have close relationships in every class; I chose a mix of small and large classes. Out of 17 courses I took at Harvard, there was exactly one that was my second choice because I did not get into the class I wanted. The one I didn't get was a 12-person upper-level seminar with a popular prof outside of my major, and when too many people showed up, the prof decided to give majors in that department first priority. And for what it's worth, I majored in a huge department (psychology), and I had about four big required classes; the rest were departmental electives, and I had no trouble getting into small seminars that interested me.</p>
<p>I agree that switching TF's when necessary is key to maximize the experience. This is almost always doable. My one bad TF experience was in a Core class senior spring -- I got lazy about switching sections, didn't bother to do it, and I regretted it.</p>