Engineering Student/Faculty Ratio

Colleges and Universities A-Z Vanderbilt University
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<p>Hi all! I am planning to apply ED II to VU's school of engineering, and have read from many posts on the forum that a focus on undergraduates and high professor accessibility are a big plus for the university. However, while looking up information, I found that the undergraduate engineering student/faculty ratio is 14:1, which seems quite different from the overall 8:1 ratio. I'm sure the school still provides solid education, but does any one know about the reasons behind such a difference?</p>

<p>link: <a href="http://engineering.vanderbilt.edu/about/statistics.php"&gt;http://engineering.vanderbilt.edu/about/statistics.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Thanks!</p>

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<p>It looks like the ratio is for students to Tenure and Tenure track faculty and does not include all teaching faculty. With the teaching faculty it’s 11:1.</p>

<p>My son is a sophomore mechanical engineering student. His engineering classes have ranged from 10 - 75 students. Most of his engineering classes are around 30 students. </p>

<p>I would look at class size in addition to student / faculty ratio. There can be faculty on staff that don’t teach undergraduate classes. They perform research and work with grad students. They may instruct you once in your undergraduate career.</p>

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<p>Thank you for your inputs @Go9ersjrh! How does your son like Vanderbilt so far?</p>

<p>Also, looking at the demographics, it appears that the engineering school contains a much higher percentage of international students and a smaller percentage of Asians than the University as a whole, which I found surprising.</p>

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<p>You can find class size for all classes, present and past, here:</p>

<p><a href=“https://webapp.mis.vanderbilt.edu/more/SearchClasses!input.action”>https://webapp.mis.vanderbilt.edu/more/SearchClasses!input.action&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Wow, this is very informative. Seems most classes other than entry-level lectures have 20~35 students, and labs are typically 12.</p>

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<p>^ That sounds about right. Some majors have more students (ME ~75, BME ~60, ChBE ~55) so their core classes are often divided into two sections. With most other engineering majors, there’s only one section offered for each core class, so all the students in that major enroll together.</p>

<p>A&S is different because students have a much wider variety of courses they can take to count towards their major, often leading to fewer students in each course. A ratio of 8:1 seems really low though. I’m guessing that’s the literal ratio of faculty to students, and not the average class size. As you can imagine, there are professors who don’t teach more than a class or two, so they help bring that ratio down.</p>

<p>Anyways, these minor differences in class sizes are not going to affect the availability of the professor.</p>

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<p>@kuan9611‌ My son loves Vanderbilt. We were having that discussion this morning and he was telling us how happy he is to be at Vanderbilt.</p>

<p>As a female engineer, I’ll also point out that 32% of the engineering students are women. That is a very high percentage for an engineering school. I’m pleased to see an engineering school that reaches out to women.</p>

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<p>@Go9ersjrh‌ that’s great to hear on both points! I’m a girl applying to the school of engineering.</p>