<p>He instructed the tour to look in on our class and said, "This is a medium-large class at Johns Hopkins." </p>
<p>That was the biggest load of crap. Haha</p>
<p>There are 17 kids in the class. That is TINY. </p>
<p>Intro Chem - 285 or 130 (Depending if you're in the good professor's class or not.)
Cog Neuro ~ 200
Etc etc.... These are the classes you'll be in.</p>
<p>I have one seminar with like 7 kids, but that's a 1 hour. </p>
<p>Hoping one of the kids on that tour gets some real perspective.</p>
<p>If you're on a tour, why don't you check out Remsen 1... there are many classes held in there. It's that big for a reason!</p>
<p>Thanks for clearing up the misrepresentation.</p>
<p>Although – I might be weird, but I kind of like the idea of huge classes. I feel like if I went to a school that boasted small class sizes all the time, it’d feel like high school V2. I want to experience the big lecture hall, TAs, having to stand out for a professor to know my name, and all. I don’t want that all the time, either, of course – just a balance.</p>
<p>I completely agree. There really is no point for small classes when the nature of the learning material doesn’t depend on it. You get your small labs. I have no complaints with my big classes, I just wish JH would be more honest about what they’re selling.</p>
<p>This is also a Science vs Humanities issue. The tour guide would be correct if students were future history or philosophy majors. DS1 has only 1 class this semester with more than 20 students (its a popular class with 50 students).</p>
<p>That could also be true of Juniors and Seniors, but then the tour guide should have said that. His exact wording was: “This is a medium to large class at Hopkins.” Not: “major in something uncommon, and you’ll have smaller classes.”</p>
<p>They should seriously show the huge lecture halls, cuz that’s where most of your classes are the first couple years.</p>
<p>Actually DS1 is a writing sems major (pretty common) and the first 2 years were the same as this. He would scan the course guide and choose courses limited to 20 or less for the most part.
Agree one should point out that no intro science course is so small and in fact they are huge. (in another life I was a TA for a large orgo class at an Ivy)</p>
<p>What difference does it make how many people are sitting in on a lecture? You sit there, listen, and take notes. All of the large lectures are followed up by much smaller sections where you can get your questions answered by a TA. And you can always go to the professor’s office hours if you have a question that the TA can’t give you satisfaction on. That’s the way all research universities work.</p>
<p>Yes, LAC’s will have smaller lecture classes because they have fewer students to begin with. But professors at LAC’s, particularly in the sciences, are generally not at the cutting edge of their fields. Take you choice. </p>
<p>And if you think some lectures at Hopkins are large, check out Cornell.</p>
<p>Accepting your statistics as accurate, they do not stand for the proposition that “class sizes are nevertheless roughly similar.” The statistics deal with percentage of classes, such as those over 100, which tells you very little. Large lectures are generally only used for basic, introductory type courses which, in the overall scheme of things, is a small percentage of courses listed in the catalog. However, these large classes frequently are a large percentage of a freshmen’s curriculum and, if you are trying to fulfill premed requirements, a significant percentage of your college academic career. But the real issue is not the percentage of large classes (since introductory lecture classes tend to be large everywhere), but how large is large. </p>
<p>I don’t know about NYU, but I know that Cornell has some large lecture classes with well over 1000 students (the largest lecture hall there seats something like 2000, and is full for Intro Psych). Obviously, they also have small classes and seminars, which offset the percentages you have cited. Thus, while the percentage of large classes may be similar, the size of the large classes are not.</p>
They are. The data came from the Common Data Sets, filled out by the colleges themselves.</p>
<p>
I would agree with this. I also think, however, that there comes a critical point where size becomes somewhat irrelevant. In other words, once you get past 30 or 40 students, there is not much difference between a class of 80 and a class of 250.</p>
<p>This is getting off track, though. The main point is that Hopkins does have relatively small classes. For those interested in seeing what class sizes are like for their major:</p>
![http://farm3.static.■■■■■■■■■■/2077/1811968545_b36400f441_o.jpg]Like[/url](http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2077/1811968545_b36400f441_o.jpg%5DLike%5B/url){kind=link}
![http://kramtark.files.■■■■■■■■■■■■■/2007/09/cimg3628.jpg]this[/url](http://kramtark.files.wordpress.com/2007/09/cimg3628.jpg%5Dthis%5B/url){kind=link}
