<p>Hey, I was just wondering a few things. I'm strongly considering Rice ED, so just to be sure, I'm finding out all that I can:</p>
<p>1) How many classes are the small, seminar-styled type? And if they aren't seminar styled, how many classes are small in general? (I found this on the website, but I would like some further insight from current/future students on class size and class enjoyability.)</p>
<p>2) How open is the curriculum? Do you get opportunities to explore what you might be interested in? Or are you generally tied to requirements? If it's somewhere in between, what are the effects of this? I'm not too sure what I'd like to do, even though I know I'll have to apply to one of the four undergrad schools. I need a means to explore a little bit...</p>
<p>Thanks in advance!</p>
<p>Class size depends on your area of study. I’m an English and political science major, and I haven’t had a class larger than 40 people since freshman year. Most of the classes I’ve had after freshman year have had 15 or fewer people. That seems to be the case in most of the humanities and social science classes.</p>
<p>Don’t worry too much about which school to apply to, since once you’re in to Rice you can move freely between areas of study. The curriculum is pretty open; there are o core requirements, only distribution. You can read about it more on the registrar’s website.</p>
<p>I pretty much agree with NYSkins 1. I just started classes a week ago, and here are my observations:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Class sizes are a lot smaller compared to most other universities, but they can still be fairly big (especially intro classes). My general chemistry class has 139 students, my introductory biology class has about 220, my intro to comparative politics class is about 68 students, and my leadership class is about about 35 students. However, since these are intro classes, it is understandable that classes can be this big… at Cornell, for instance, I heard Intro Bio is about 400 students. It is very rare for classes to be more than 150 students at Rice.</p>
<ul>
<li>Professors here are committed to teaching and for the most part are friendly/understandable. They genuinely care about what they are teaching, and most of my professors this semester are engaging.</li>
</ul></li>
</ul>
<p>-The curriculum is VERY OPEN at Rice. The distribution credits are very loose, and some of them can be fulfilled through AP Credit. There are 3 distribution areas: humanities/languages, history/social sciences, and sciences/math. You only need 12 credits in each distribution area, which translates roughly to 3-4 classes per distribution. However, if you have taken a lot of APs in high school, you can have most of the requirements fulfilled. I have D3 fulfilled through AP Credit and 6/12 credits in D2 just through APs alone. </p>
<p>-It is also not hard to transfer between academic divisions once you get here.</p>
<p>Classes get MUCH smaller after intro classes. My DD routinely had small classes of 10-15 students.</p>
<p>The best solution would be to look for yourself. A Classics major would obviously claim that classes are quite small, while an Economics major might claim the opposite.</p>
<p>It’s also the best way to compare to other universities. Obviously one should take claims of “much smaller” or “much larger” courses with a bucket of salt. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>[Rice</a> University - Search Courses](<a href=“http://courses.rice.edu/admweb/swkscat.main]Rice”>http://courses.rice.edu/admweb/swkscat.main)</p>
<p>From my cursory glance over several courses in different subject areas, courses at Rice do not seem to be any smaller than at my alma mater, which is quite a bit larger.</p>
<p>Intro classes in popular majors are big (100-150) and they get significantly smaller after that.</p>