How BIG are the classes at IU

<p>My son was accepted this morning to IU, and hopefully will be
a direct admit to Kelley. Although the school has been his first
choice all along, I am concerned about the size of the classes.
I realize that his freshman lectures may be huge, but can anyone
give me numbers to largest lectures to the number of smaller sections
of upper level business classes. Thanks........</p>

<p>My son is a business major (currently a sophomore). So far his largest classes have been Calculus, Intro to Management, and Basic Accounting--around 270 students in one, 125 in the second, and 90 in the third. On the other hand, his Macroeconomics class had 30 students, his English class had 25, his Public Speaking course had 35, his one History class had 20, his Business Communications course has about 45, and his Western European Intellectual Thought courses had about 12. (All but the last one of these is a normal freshman course. The last one is a Senior course that he took as a freshman.)</p>

<p>If you want to see the regular sizes of classes, go to the Schedule of Classes for next semester and see how many open spots there are for each class in question. You can get to it directly from the main page (<a href="http://www.iub.edu%5B/url%5D"&gt;www.iub.edu&lt;/a&gt;) by choosing from the dropdown of "Popular Campus Sites".</p>

<p>If your son signs up for the Honors version of some of his classes (like Calculus, Finite Math, etc)--which he may be able to do as a direct admit--the class sizes will be much smaller.</p>

<p>Thanks so much Calcruzor for the info- I am pleasantly surprised.
I have heard that our big state school in Washington has sometimes
up to 800 kids in their lecture classes and that seems ridiculous!
Is your son enjoying the midwest and his overall experience at IU?</p>

<p>Even here in California, overcrowding in the schools is an issue. There was an article at the begining of the school year about the 125 waitlisted students for one required Economics course at UC Berkeley.</p>

<p>As far as my son, he enjoys Indiana immensely, although he is considering transfering schools (to either Virginia or USC) for only one reason--which is that he wants to get a job on one of the coasts, and not in the midwest, upon graduation. The longer he stays at Indiana, the more he is liking it--especially now that he is out of the dorms and has his own place. I'm not sure whether he is still planning to apply as a transfer or not considering how this year is going--what with friends, activities, and the way he is doing in his classes.</p>

<p>He went to a career fair sponsored by the school where both employers and law schools came and presented. That was a real eye-opener for him--especially considering how many other top-notch schools, such as Columbia, Yale, NYU, Texas, Emory, and Tufts--came to Indiana to try and recruit students into their law school. Also, he was pleasantly surprised by the number and prestige of some of the east coast employers that came also--some of whom practically offered him summer internship employment on the spot. </p>

<p>Recently in one of his classes, he (and his small group of 5 others) was given an assignment to figure out how to market Target's brands into the spanish-speaking market. During the course of the class, he was actually able to view memos Target had put out in this regard to their distributors and suppliers, and then later discuss with Target's marketing manager their successes and failures in this regard. He then did a graphic design for Target to consider using as a modification in their overseas markets. I think this kind of hands-on experience is impressive--especially considering it was only a sophomore-level course.</p>

<p>Like I said, we'll see what he decides after the year is over.</p>

<p>P.S. Thanks for asking.</p>

<p>Thanks again Calcruzor-I enjoy hearing about your son's experience at IU.
Just as an aside, I also have a son who is a freshman at USC (he is a math major who is interested in law) and am anxiously awaiting tomorrow when we will see him for parents weekend.
He is loving USC and if your son wants to end up working on the "coasts",
the Marshall School of Business may be a good choice. To hear about the company recruiters and law school recruiters coming to IU is wonderful.
My son doesn't yet know where he'll "settle". At one point, he was considering NYU because he thought he wanted a job on Wall Street, but
didn't want his college experience to be totally in the city. The other school which he is exploring is Bentley, which is outside of Boston. They are predominantly a business school with an amazing "stock trading room" but
they lack the huge sports program,etc. so it may be off the list.
I did take your advice and looked through the class schedules and feel that
class size should not be an issue. Thanks again for your help.....</p>

<p>Sounds like your one son and mine looked at some of the same schools. My son's list was: Indiana, NYU, Bentley, Fordham, Purdue, and Pittsburgh, with Oregon as his safety; he was accepted at all but NYU (reject) and Fordham (waitlist). We visited every school on the list but Oregon (and I visited there since I needed to go to Eugene for a work assignment with Symantec). Virginia and USC were not on the list at that time due to his high school grades and test scores not being good enough.</p>

<p>Bentley is an interesting school with a good location on the west side of Boston's metro area, with an amazing trading desk, and heavily-business focused curriculum, but while it came close to Indiana, he and I were a little put off by how expensive it was and that it appeared to lack the name-recognition of Indiana, Purdue, and Pittsburgh. Plus its students were competing in Boston with Harvard, Tufts, MIT, Vassar, Brandeis, Boston College, Boston University, and the University of Massachusetts--just to name a few--and so although it had one of the best undergraduate business programs of these (along with MIT, Boston College, and BU), there was a bit of a question as to job placement capability. Still, it has a brand new campus and some fairly high-tech labs (I liked the foreign language lab where you go in and learn the language via computer/telephone hook-ups with teachers living in the foreign country--and where the TVs all broadcast live foreign language news and stock market information--quite impressive.) They were planning to build a hockey rink at that time--and since my son doesn't play hockey, we couldn't see the reason to be spending a lot to help them finance this facility.</p>

<p>My biggest classes are between 100-200, which is probably expected of intro classes or math classes a lot of students have to take. My level 300 German class, however, only has about 20 maybe, and my honors topics course only has 14.</p>