I am guessing this is publicly available information, but also a pain to find. It’s pretty easy to find things like 8:1 student faculty ratio, or statements like “95% of our classes have less than 20 students.” But I know that intro bio, intro chem ,organic chem, etc. are usually in the 5% so that number isn’t really that helpful.
I’ll use Rochester as an example. A quick google search tells me 10:1 ratio, 70% classes less than 20 students. Which sounds great. But our pre-med tour guide (when asked) said that her freshman classes had 200+, and she was excited that as a senior her classes were down to about 50.
I’m guessing that’s fairly typical. But I’d really like to know. I guess that could be a good question for D to contact admissions with. It’s info they should have easy access to, but won’t be on the website or available from a google search.
Please let me know if there is an easy way to find this out.
Look for the college’s class schedule on line. For some colleges, it will show the size limit and actual enrollment.
For others, it may show only open seats, or only whether there are open seats. But you may be able to guess by how many lab sections are associated with each lecture, for example.
Biology is typically a popular major, so class sizes are often larger than typical for a college. Other major pre-meds add additional students to the frosh/soph biology major courses that are the same as typical pre-med requirements.
Remember also that if a college has one 200 student class and ten 20 student classes, half of the students will be in the large class even though 91% of the classes are small classes and the average class size is 36.
Most schools are going to have large class sizes for intro courses. Just the nature of the beast.
I would recommend not only asking about class size but also if there are recitations/small break out sessions for those large lecture courses. That can make a big class much more manageable.
As a follow up to @ucbalumnus’ suggestion, you can usually find the class schedule for the upcoming semester by going to the registrar’s page on the school’s website. I did this for Rochester, and if you scroll down, on the left-hand side of the page there is a link to “search for courses by term, subject, instructor, keywords, and more.” If you click that, you land on a page for a search engine:
– you can enter an academic department, such as chemistry, and pull up the offered classes with the class size limits. I did the same thing for Pitt. Sometimes just googling the school, with “class search,” “search for classes,” “schedule of courses,” and, sometimes, “registrar,” will get you to the right place. Good luck!
I also noticed another piece of info this gives me. I can see that Rochester goes from 445 students currently enrolled in Chem II to 211 in Organic II. I know that all of that won’t be pre-meds dropping, but I’m guessing most will. I doubt that many people take Chem II without planning on continuing the sequence.
Not picking on Rochester btw, I know that’s normal. I used it in my original example because D loved the school when we toured. Her 2 biggest concerns were large classes and pre-med attrition. Looks like nothing to put her at ease here, although I don’t know that it will be much better at many places.
Does Chem sound like a good way to check this? I’m thinking that Bio is a bit more varied on what is required and the sequence, but most schools seem to have Gen Chem I and II, and Orgo I and II. So that might be easier to look up if I’m checking 20 schools and not just digging deeper on one.
It’s fairly easy to find comparative data for average class sizes overall.
It’s a bit harder to find the sizes of specific individual classes (but as others suggested above, some schools do have make this info available in their online schedules).
As far as I can tell, it’s nearly impossible to find comparative data for the average class sizes of specific programs. The best you can do, probably, is to hunt-and-peck for sizes of what you think are representative pre-med courses, school by school.
Now, there are some LACs where virtually ALL classes are capped at a fairly low number (maybe 25 or 35). Many of them have no classes, or only a very small percentage, with >= 50 students. Virtually all of them would have pre-med programs. So, if small classes are a high priority, consider LACs.
At an example LAC, introductory sequences in biology have diversified in recent years to include topics for students with varying interests. While all introductory biology courses suitable for pre-med students will explore the basic systems of biology and include a lab component, more specific areas of potential interest are introduced in courses with titles such as Microbes Rule!, Life in Space and Our Blue Planet. For these example classes, enrollment generally caps at 30 students. I’d expect this to represent a typical maximum figure at this school for pre-med classes in general.
At some of the larger schools, once you get past the intro courses, different disciplines have their own organic chem courses so that could also be part of the drop off in numbers. For example, at Purdue, the chemical engineers have their own organic chem courses within the school of chemical engineering.
I didn’t think about either of those reasons for the chem numbers dropping, thanks for the info. I don’t know much about engineering or other specialized majors that require more chemistry. I figured if you took it beyond the first semester you were probably taking the next 3.
She is kind of leaning towards LAC’s for this reason, although the small universities also have some appeal. It isn’t the only thing she is looking at, but over the last couple of months she seems to be much more concerned about class size than she was before. I suppose part of that is that the process is getting a bit more real for her as we get closer to having to make real decisions this summer about where she will apply.
@merc81 I lol at your answer because I didn’t have to look at the link to know what school you were talking about. I had already looked up Hamilton’s classes as it is one of her higher choices right now. (If you remember from our conversation a couple months ago she was a bit dismissive when we visited but she has since realized that it checks a bunch of her boxes and deserves a closer look). I didn’t see class size at Hamilton, but it looked like the orgo labs were a 2:1 ratio to lecture, so the lecture class can’t be much over 70 students I would think.
Kudos to Rochester btw for making this info so easy to find. Easier than anywhere else I have checked so far. Easier frankly than the 2 schools my older boys are currently at. Both schools seem to hide class size and number of open seats in hard to find places even for current students. But that’s another aggravation for another thread!
Not that some colleges offer a choice of two or three entry points (even for pre-meds) in fields such as chemistry, physics and math/statistics, with suitability depending on the student’s level of preparation, personal interests and career goals.
Some majors may require general chemistry but not organic chemistry. For example, non-chemical non-biomedical engineering majors may have such requirements.