<p>Is the ratio truly 7:1 as advertised? I've had a friend tell me that classes are generally larger for intro courses and that the S:T ratio is skewed because of higher level courses that tend to have less the 5 students. Can any current student give me more information about the S:T ratio?</p>
<p>Your friend is absolutely right. Also, I think many people use the student:“faculty” ratio interchangeably with that. That’s probably a mistake. There are many faculty members at the university, but not all of them are teaching currently or at any given time and I think that’s the statistic that matters. Therefore if you look at this, it’ll probably be larger. With that said, Emory doesn’t let its intro. classes get as large as many peers. For example, most similar sized top 20s will have intro. bio. courses with well over 100 people in the sections. Emory caps it at like 92 for 141, and 85 in 142. The largest class is probably gen. chem which is oversized at like 120 this year (but even that isn’t terrible) and I think it gets smaller for 142 (closer to 100) and organic chem. at like 85 1st semester and like 100 second. Physics in the 80s both semesters Intro. and core courses are just bound to be large. However, if lucky, normally one can get into any “special” sections being offered. For example, Morkin has a special gen. chem. section that has 45 students. Freshmen orgo, is like 45-50 students (and dropping, I think he weeded some out last semester), Dennis Liotta teaches an orgo. section of 45-50 students. One good thing is that Emory’s calc. 1/2 classes are normally capped at around 30. You have lots of teachers plus AP Credit to thank for that.<br>
But anyway, Emory is no different from other top research universities except for the intro classes being perhaps slightly smaller in many cases. However, you’ll find that many profs. are talented enough to make a large class fun. Dr. Edward’s psyche 110 class is pretty large and he successfully uses Socratic method. Dr. Weinshenck and Soria manage it. Dr. Eisen’s bio 141 class is case study based even though there are 92 students. So don’t worry about it. If you want to see extremely large classes with mediocre teaching quality, go sit in an intro. science class at Georgia Tech. No wonder their grades are so low!</p>
<p>Thanks a bunch bernie, informative as always. One more question, what year do classes began to get smaller, maybe junior year when all required classes are taken?</p>
<p>Yes, that would be my guess. Gonna be honest though. If you are a science major, don’t expect to see non-seminar/non-special topics courses under 30 or even 40 people. You can take classes in the social sciences/humanities that are small beginning your freshmen year though as many don’t have pre-reqs and are open to anyone interested. I suppose an exception to the rule for science courses is the NBB stats. course. That’s pretty small.</p>