<p>I heard that some lectures have about 300 students. That's a heck lot! Do students get to interact with professors at all? What about tutorial sessions?</p>
<p>It depends on the type of classes you’re taking. </p>
<p>Generally, introductory level courses have those huge numbers (I’m in a course with over 600 students). However, once you get into the higher-level courses, especially seminar courses, the numbers drop down a bit (Last term, I was in a seminar course with 15 students. This term, I’m in a 400-level lecture course with about 70 students).</p>
<p>In courses with a large amount of students, it’s essentially down to you to seek out your professors. You can certainly ask questions during lectures (even in those classes with 600+ students) but you can also talk to them during their office hours.</p>
<p>I’ll concur with rougetardis, it varies a lot, and you’ll get used to large classes (hopefully; besides, the vast majority of new students have never been in such large classes either), and the numbers drop quickly in higher level courses (a little bit less so in larger programs).</p>
<p>On interacting with prof: it’s your job to make the contact, not the prof’s, especially in those extra large classes (in those cases, however, if you want help with course material, a good TA may be a better option). If you’re aiming for grad school, make sure you know about the profs in your department (it’s best to talk to your departmental undergraduate society), to see which are the best profs to contact and interact with. Not all the good profs are useful for letter of recommendations and research, and not all great researchers are good to work with (though they can be really useful for recommedations), and start working on it in your second year (don’t waste your time in freshmen year with that).</p>
<p>Hi guys, thanks for answering my question! Do you think that the number of students in the lecture affects the quality of the lecture, though? I attended a large university for a while, and found great difficulty in accessing the lecturers. Sure, I asked questions at the end of the lecture and visited some of my professors after class at their desks (to ask questions as well), but that hardly seemed to help me form up some sort of relationship with them.</p>
<p>There’s supposedly a mentor programme at McGill where new students are paired with members of the faculty. Does anyone know about this?</p>
<p>Is it this program? [Staff-Student</a> Mentoring Program | Mentoring - McGill University](<a href=“http://www.mcgill.ca/mentoring/staff-student-mentoring-program]Staff-Student”>http://www.mcgill.ca/mentoring/staff-student-mentoring-program)</p>
<p>I don’t have any experience with it but it does seem like a good way to have a “ready-made” mentor right from the start.</p>
<p>Professors here are generally receptive to students. I think the best way to form relationships with profs (whether in your class or within your department) is to talk to them about your shared interests. For example, I formed a strong relationship with a prof within my department just by joining his lab. I just emailed him initially asking if he was accepting volunteer research assistants. We talked about our shared interests and he eventually asked if I wanted to be part of his lab.</p>
<p>Like Blobof said, it’s down to the student to make the effort. If you’re looking at going down a particular path (and you think Prof X would be helpful), shoot them an email asking for a meeting. If they can’t help ask if they know others that might be able to help you/mentor you.</p>
<p>There’s not much relationship to be had with most profs of large courses. If that’s all they teach, they’re either part-timers, grad students or tenured no-longer-involved-in-research profs. Professors who still do research will also teach graduate courses and advanced undergrad courses from time to time, and not end up teaching the early gigantic courses too often. And since McGill really is research intensive, profs will not seek contact with students in large classes, though some may start “recruiting” potential graduate students in third and fourth year courses. So, if you don’t take the initiative, they’ll assume you’re just your random, average, uninvolved student.</p>
<p>As to quality of teaching: it depends on the class, the prof, and the student’s learning style. Some students just don’t adapt/work well in large lectures with little interaction and no in class exercises/work-on-your-own time (my brother’s ex girlfriend couldn’t do calculus in university, so she went back and took it in cegep and got 95% there). Other courses have readily available slides, recorded lectures, extra material for outside class that make learning in and out of the gigantic class a breeze (supposing you’re sufficiently independent).</p>