<p>Most English classes at Cornell are pretty small, with the exception of the predictable lecture courses in History of Literature and Shakespeare (even those come with discussion sections). I took numerous seminars and certainly got to know plenty of professors when I attended as an undergraduate–a fair number of them, in fact, came to my Ithaca wedding to another Cornell undergraduate. The school is huge and very diverse, but the # of people in each department–especially the # of serious, academically-oriented undergraduates in each humanities department–is not.</p>
<p>Classics, philosophy, and most of the modern languages are smaller majors than English, and even more intimate.</p>
<p>'Ithaca (and Cambridge, New Haven, Hanover, etc.) will still be there when it comes time to continue the learning adventure that you began at Middlebury."</p>
<p>This is a really big assumption to make. Most undergrads at Middlebury won’t have the opportunity to attend the graduate program of their choice at an Ivy. Same goes for most Ivy undergrads.</p>
<p>I transferred from a tiny, elite LAC to an Ivy, and the professors I’m still in touch with are from the Ivy (and from its allegedly giant and impersonal law school). Whether you develop close relationships with professors has more to do with you and your actions than with where you go to school.</p>
<p>There’s no university in the world where Classics is taught via giant lectures. There just isn’t enough interest. An ancient-world survey course, maybe, but not the courses a possible major is likely to take.</p>
<p>This isn’t to say that Cornell is better for the OP – just that he shouldn’t assume that it’s worse.</p>
<p>True, although Ivies aren’t the best at everything, including grad school programs. Perhaps I should have said “…Madison, and State College, and Chapel Hill, and Chicago…”
And as the Wall Street Journal Feeder ranking demonstrated, they’re also not the best at getting their undergrads into top grad school programs.</p>
<p>WSJ is another one of those “%” measures in which diverse universities are penalized for their very diversity. LACs have more homogeneous student bodies, with more homogeneous goals. Cornell’s liberal arts college constitutes only 1/3 of its undergraduate student body, yet it is compared here to institutions that have liberal arts students and nobody else. I will concede that a smaller percentage of its grads in colleges of engineering, architecture, hotel administration, and agriculture will be entering law school, or whatever. However the physical presence of these individuals studying in these other colleges has no impact on the destinations of CAS students applying to grad schools. Yet all these other students will be found in the denominator on these “%” measures. If CAS could be broken out separately the % numbers would not look identically the same.</p>
<p>Basically, you get what you deserve, is what I observed, as far as subsequent destinations. I imagine that’s true at Middlebury college also. Grad schools are admitting individuals, on their individual merits, you will not be judged as an aggregate. IMO.</p>
<p>I feel compelled to point out that 5 fully engaged faculty, teaching their own classes and grading their material, and focussing on undergrad teaching, could actually provide more guidance than a dozen listed faculty who aren’t really there.It’s not always numbers that point to the excellence of the faculty, or their range.</p>
<p>Also I want to point out that monydad keeps quoting less than ideal experiences of daughters at unnamed LACs, but not Midd. </p>
<p>We are comparing Midd and Cornell, not LACs in general, which vary widely in terms of quality, depth, and satisfaction of the student body. Midd is one of the highest rated schools in terms of student satisfaction as well as quality of academics-higher than Cornell. Princeton review comment re Midd:“runs like butter.”</p>
<p>My S has had no conflicts getting classes. Friend at Cornell has more problems, couldn’t get into a prereq and is already wondering if summer school is necessary.</p>
<p>“5 fully engaged faculty, teaching their own classes and grading their material, and focussing on undergrad teaching, could actually provide more guidance than a dozen listed faculty who aren’t really there”</p>
<p>They could, though it can’t be conclusively determined. what can be conclusively determined is the # courses you can choose from, offered by that faculty,engaged or otherwise, which in this field is listed in post #18.</p>
<p>And while not Midd the other examples share general characteristics relating to size of student body and faculty which leads me to opine that Midd is not immune from these same possibilities. But maybe it’s so very different and unique, OP can investigate and decide.</p>
<p>If anything, I’m glad to see that the battle raging in my own head and among my parents and close friends is quite universal. It’s a big question, and all of your responses have added fuel to the decision process. I’m also happy to see that there is no right answer–partially because that means there’s no wrong answer either. I will consider all of your advice to choose what is right for me. By all means, continue discussion, but please do remember that classics and/or foreign languages are in tandem to a very serious study of English literature. It would be fitting to more generally consider the two schools for their humanities programs, as most posters have done.</p>