<p>Most people are more interested in small classes with more of a one-on-one feel. Personally, the classes I've enjoyed most in high school/university summer courses have been the larger more lecture heavy courses. What are some strong schools with larger classes? Thanks!</p>
<p>lol. that’s an interesting perspective. anyway…by percentage of classes 50 students or more of the top 25 schools (US News). (Only those with 10%+)</p>
<p>UCLA- 21.9%
Cornell- 18.2%
UVA- 15.4%
UC Berkeley- 14.2%
Stanford- 12.1%
USC- 11.9%
MIT- 11.3%
Princeton- 11%
Carnegie Mellon- 10.6%
Johns Hopkins- 10.4%
Notre Dame- 10.2%
WashU- 10.2%
Caltech- 10.1%
Brown- 10%</p>
<p>Check out the higher-ranking state flagships (UC-Berkeley, UCLA, UNC, Michigan, Texas, Wisconsin, etc.). At these schools (except for Berkeley and maybe a couple others), less than 50% of classes will have < 20 students. 10% or more will have 50 or more students (with many lectures enrolling hundreds). Among private universities, NYU and USC are two large schools (30K+ students) where ~10% of classes have 50 or more students.</p>
<p>Some of the higher-ranking schools may expect you to take a few small seminar classes. Their big lecture classes (100 or more students) usually will have corresponding discussion/lab sections, taught by grad students, with 25 students (or fewer). I don’t know if you can avoid this entirely, but if you’d like to try, look at lower-ranking universities and avoid honors colleges. Or just choose a very popular major; avoid schools that require a thesis; don’t try to place out of intro courses. Look for schools with very high research expenditures per student, as well as lots of faculty awards (which you can look for in the Washington Monthly “Research” ranking). Then, of these schools, focus on the ones where < 50% of classes have less than 20 students and > 10% have 50 or more. You can find class size information in each school’s Common Data Set or on collegedata.com.</p>
<p>If you need aid, that could be a problem. Public universities generally don’t fully cover financial need of OOS students. NYU is known for poor financial aid, too. So if you need aid, focus on large in-state public universities. Or, you could try one of the OOS public universities that guarantees large merit scholarships such as Alabama (45% of classes < 20 students, 17% > 50). The risk there is that as a merit recipient, they may expect you to enroll in more “honors” classes with smaller enrollments.</p>
<p>The problem with the nostalgic list above is that so many of them are very selective private schools. Stanford, Princeton, JHU etc. may hit you coming and going with requirements to attend small classes (freshmen seminars, thesis courses, etc.) Their big lecture classes may be concentrated in intro-level courses in econ, psych, biology, and other popular areas (including pre-med courses). In your other courses, you may have to put up with a lot of talkative smart kids asking questions and stating opinions. </p>
<p>At Berkeley (which probably has the smallest average class sizes of any state university), even a low-demand major like linguistics will have required “core” courses with way more than 50 students.</p>
<p>Actually many/most schools have larger class sizes for their 100/200 level courses…even many of the pricey elites. </p>
<p>many schools’ class sizes start shrinking as you get to upper-division. </p>
<p>When you say “large”, what do you mean? It seems to me that you’d be fine with a class size of 35+. I don’t think those 400+ class sizes offer any add’l benefit…lol.</p>
<p>Yes, 40 or so is good for me.</p>
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<p>That’s true. For example Princeton, which often is touted as one of the most “undergraduate focused” Ivies, has 37 courses with 100 or more students (out of 823). The trouble is, even at the 100 level, for Fall 2014 alone they also have ~40 freshmen seminars (“Making Sense of the Civil War” etc) with maximum enrollments of 15. Do the math. With fewer than 1400 incoming freshmen, they’ve got nearly everyone covered. </p>
<p>The pricey elites aim not just to train competent doctors, lawyers, and engineers but also “thought leaders”. To that end they’ll try to engage you in a certain amount of Socratic chit-chat. If all you want to do is avoid any real discussion, 40+ students (or even fewer) will do. If your purpose is to fly under the professor’s radar completely, it’s those 400+ class sizes that offer the serious ROI.</p>