How important should class size be in choosing a college?

College Search & Selection
21

<p>I had some classes in college with four enrolled students; I had others with hundreds.</p>

<p>The largest classes had smaller discussion sections led by graduate students.</p>

<p>One of my two favorite classes was a large lecture, taught by a dynamic, passionate, senior professor. The other one was a freshman writing seminar, taught by a graduate student who received his Ph.D. at the end of the year, took a tenure track position the next year at Oberlin, and is now a full professor at Williams.</p>

<p>Whether you go to a large university or a liberal arts college, you’ll have a mixture of large and small classes; you’ll likely have more large lectures at bigger schools, and more small classes at liberal arts colleges. Even at large universities, class size tends to shrink in upper division classes. (As an upper division history major, I had two classes with four students in them. I also had a conversational language course my senior year where I was the only student.)</p>

22

<p>Most of the schools I’m looking at are average to large; only a couple of them have fewer than 10,000 undergraduates. However, my intended major and other academic trajectory (though I may stray from it) is fairly specific. My guess is that my class sizes will be very polarized.</p>