<p>I've heard some really bad things about Harvard and it's "lecture"-style courses. What do you think?</p>
<p>What are some top schools with great academics and small class sizes? (avg. 20-30 or less)</p>
<p>If you are talking about top schools where all the classes tend to be small, then you are talking about Liberal Arts Colleges (LACs). The top ones are nearly as competitive to get into the the top universities and are much more undergraduate focused because they have no graduate students. (Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore, Pomona, Bowdoin, Carleton, Middlebury, Vassar, Bates, Colby, Claremont McKenna, Grinnell, Macalester, Oberlin, etc…)</p>
<p>All the top universities have large lecture-style intro classes and, usually, smaller advanced classes-sometimes very small and highly specialized. Sections, taught by graduate students, provide the opportunity for discussion in intro classes. In all cases, top universities are about research and producing graduate students - undergraduate education is a distinctly third place concern for all but a few (Wash U comes to mind). That doesn’t mean that top universities are bad for undergrads-these are world class institutions who attract some of the most talented undergrads, but they are not world class because of their teaching.</p>
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Depends on your major. Many geology courses at huge universities can be much smaller than biology or psychology courses at LACs.</p>
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Any college will have lectures. Even Oxford and Cambridge, renowned for their tutorial system, have lectures. Not every subject works well in a seminar format.</p>
<p>I know that all universities have lectures… I don’t have a problem with that. I just don’t want to spend 4 years in a lecture setting. What I meant was more of a focus on undergrads and Wash U does just that? Are there other top schools that concentrate on undergrads more?</p>
<p>^Princeton, Dartmouth</p>
<p>Chicago also qualifies and has some of the smallest undergraduate classes on average for a university. (As a current student, the number of people in my classes this quarter counting myself are respectively 4, 16, 8, and 3.) Of course, it also has a top-notch graduate program so many students assume that there isn’t an undergraduate focus, but this is incorrect.</p>
<p>If you are looking for something different, check out the tutorial system at the Honors Tutorial College at Ohio University: [Ohio</a> University: Honors Tutorial College:Home](<a href=“http://www.honors.ohio.edu/]Ohio”>http://www.honors.ohio.edu/)</p>
<p>Crazy hard to get into though (only 1 - 6 students admitted per major per year).</p>
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It’s been my experience that one’s undergraduate education is precisely what one makes of it. It’s possible to have small seminars with a great professor, and it’s also possible to skate by without ever meeting with a professor outside of class – even at Dartmouth.</p>
<p>Professors at most universities beg students to come visit them during office hours, and independent studies are always an option. Whether one chooses to take advantage of these resources is, of course, up to the person in question.</p>
<p>No doubt this is unsatisfactory for you and other posters who want a nice tidy list of “undergraduate-friendly” colleges, but I find it a bit silly to rule out excellent colleges so fast based on stereotypes and rumors.</p>
<p>That said, the USNWR “undergraduate teaching” ranking is as follows:</p>
<ol>
<li>Dartmouth</li>
<li>Princeton</li>
<li>Yale</li>
<li>Stanford / UMD-BC</li>
<li>Brown / William & Mary</li>
<li>Duke / Miami U / Notre Dame</li>
<li>Berkeley / Chicago / Michigan / Rice / UNC Chapel Hill / Wake Forest</li>
</ol>
<p>(I am pleased to see that both of my alma maters as well as all three major NC universities made the list.)</p>
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Could not have been better said.</p>
<p>Huh, okay, thanks guys. Then do you think that there are schools “to avoid” so to speak? Though Harvard is world-renowned, I’ve read on some sources (like the Insider’s Guide to the Colleges published by the Yale Daily News staff) that professors are generally unaccessible to undergrads. Is this true?</p>
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<p>The people I know who went to Harvard said that their professors held office hours and were accessible. The also liked the graduate students who taught their smaller class sections and they felt that they got a first rate education.</p>
<p>That doesn’t mean that Harvard is the right school for you. Some people don’t apply to Harvard because they visit and don’t like it. Some people get into Harvard and the visit and then turn it down because they didn’t like it when they visited. Some people get into Harvard and then go and then don’t like it while they are there.</p>
<p>You need to decide what school is right for you. M’s Mom gave you an absolutely excellent list of LACs that will all have small classes taught by professors in the second post. If you want a bigger school then IBclass06’s list in the 8th post is a terrific.</p>
<p>I have a Harvard friend that says he would have gotten a better education at Swarthmore but he loved his Boston experience anyway.</p>
<p>For research universities, great academics by definition require strong faculty and departmental offerings. Schools such as Dartmouth, Duke, Notre Dame, Rice, WashU and others mentioned in this thread do not necessarily score high in this important area.</p>
<p>If faculty and departmental strength is unimportant to you relative to student-teacher ratios, then it is unclear why one would prefer these schools over the LACs.</p>
<p>“It’s been my experience that one’s undergraduate education is precisely what one makes of it.”</p>
<p>Very nicely put IBClass. I could not agree more.</p>
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<p>At Chicago, the main focus is on the graduate students because in general, they are brighter than the undergraduates unlike, say, Brown or Dartmouth where the reverse is often true.</p>
<p>If you have a large class about a subject you don’t care about, you’re in for a rough and boring ride. A small class on the same subject is much more likely to have the professor engage you.</p>
<p>“At Chicago, the main focus is on the graduate students because in general, they are brighter than the undergraduates unlike, say, Brown or Dartmouth where the reverse is often true.”</p>
<p>Prodigalson, I am not sure I follow your logic. Faculty follow a curriculum and a syllabus. The intelligence of the student body has absolutely zero impact on what or how faculty teach at any respectably university. A professor at a university like Chicago will never bend to the needs of her/his students. You either swim or you sink.</p>
<p>This said, graduate students at Chicago are not smarter than undergraduate students.</p>
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<p>It has great impact on what or how the faculty decides to use their time. For example, Michigan psychology professors will spend more time teaching and mentoring their graduate students (who are among the best in their cohort) than their undergraduate students (who are not).</p>
<p>So at Caltech and MIT, where undergrads are smarter than graudate students, the faculty will chose to spend more time with undergrads than with grads? </p>
<p>Like I said, faculty do not alter their behavior to suit their students. Faculty have their obligation to research, to their graduate students and to undergraduate instruction. The intelligence of undergrads will not alter the balance.</p>
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Pfft…worse is having a small class in a subject you don’t care about. Most boring class I took at Berkeley was a survey of the American President…20 kids…most were poli sci majors trying to impress the prof and tie up the discussion with questions that were probably relevant, but the class just wasn’t for me.</p>