<p>I'd be somewhat skeptical of the under 20 stat... it really doesn't say much, since most of those classes might be in the English or Philosophy depts, depts in which you may never take a class in. I think the only one that expresses something is the student/teacher ratio, 'cause it provides an overall picture of the class distributions. After that, I think it all depends on which kinds of classes you take.</p>
<p>And Chicago's ratio is 4:1, beating everyone except CIT. And we can assume that daniel is basically right. While it is true that Chicago has a smaller % of under 20 (55% compared to 60% and 70%s above them, they also have a smaller % of over 50 than anyone else in the top 25 except Duke. So if you compare Chicago, to say, Harvard, you see that while Harvard wins in the "under 20" category, Chicago has 94% of all classes under 50 students, while Harvard only gets to 87%. A small difference in percentages, but when multiplied out to reflect probability, it gets bigger. Using an average class size of those below 50 of 30, and 75 for those classes over 50, you get a probability of 86% to be under 50 at Chicago, versus 72% at Harvard. Of course that is basically a guess, and we'd need more specific data than is available to be accurate, but it does show that the "under 20 kids" measure is not a good indicator without taking the "over 50 kids" percentage into account.</p>
<p>Also understand that some schools have freshman seminars which, by definition, have about 15 kids in it... Harvard, under the direction of Summers, has added hundreds to their catalog... still, something like that is def. not indicative of the overall class-sizes since it is stricly a freshman experience. Again, I am led to think that just the general student/staff faculty ratio is much more indicative of class sizes.</p>
<p>Our Core classes are capped at 25, so the "under 20" statistic doesn't help us.</p>
<p>And, unfortunately, folks, the student to faculty ratio is now around 6:1. We had a jump in enrollment. Our new publications will reflect that.</p>
<p>humm that's unfortunate 'cause it certainly could have been used as a nice selling point for the school.... albeit still incredibly low, that number now puts us much closer to other national universities.</p>
<p>well, since we're on this subject, I have a question: Just how exactly do we interpret the student/teacher ratio? Certainly it doesn't reflect the classroom sizes directly - I would seriously doubt the the average class at Chicago had 4 students, and now with this change to 6:1, I doubt that the average class has seen a 50% increase in enrollment. So, just how can we think about this number?</p>
<p>I'll take 6/1, it'd still be among the best in the country. But I do think you should trumpet the fact that Core classes are capped at 25 a lot more, I am a UChicago fanatic and I can't remember hearing that before. The combination of classes of that size with the large research and professional elements found at Chicago is a huge selling point for me. Screw Harvard, I actually want to KNOW my professors.</p>
<p>Well, it depends on the definition of Core. While it is true my S's Hum course was about 14 students, his calc was about 35 or more and physics about 50 (though it declined as the quarters progressed), which both count toward the Core, his language course was fewer than 15 and was not a Core course.</p>
<p>I'm wondering whether the student: faculty ratio reflects the ratio of all students to all faculty or just undergrad students to faculty.
If it's the first, then it's a useless figure...</p>
<p>I think its the latter....</p>
<p>Ah, alright. Good!</p>