<p>Is this particularly true?</p>
<p>Wouldn’t it depend on which LAC, which state university, and which courses you select?</p>
<p>It might even depend upon whose classes you take after your 1-3 required writing courses. Some faculty are just much more comfortable with their own writing and with teaching writing (usu. during office hours), and that depends on the particular faculty member. I went to a large state and the history, archaeology, and art history profs I had were great at helping me improve my writing even tho I was an English major. It’s a lot of work no matter who does it or where he or she does it. </p>
<p>It’s a legitimate question to ask a tour guide and the students you lunch with on your college visit, “how much writing do you do outside of your FE reqs? how helpful have your profs been outside of those courses? what have they done to help your writing improve? what’s the Writing Center like? how reliable has the staffers’ advice been? what are their hours?” Any hesitation in answering your questions is one indication of how important writing is at a particular school.</p>
<p>Thank you!</p>
<p>Look at results of the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), if you can find them with scoring breakdowns for various kinds of colleges. The NSSE surveys reading loads and the number of 5-page/10-page papers, among other things. I’ve seen the score breakdowns for some colleges (which used to be linked from a USA TODAY site). The “engagement” scores I saw for 8 small LACs were consistently and significantly higher than the scores I saw for Big Ten research universities (although I’m talking about small samples, and scores reported several years ago.)</p>
<p>Of course it can depend on the individual schools you’re comparing, the specific courses and major. However, it stands to reason that a small college with 100% focus on undergraduates and the liberal arts will tend to require more writing (especially if you’re comparing intro/intermediate courses). At the small-ish, LAC-like university I attended, many courses required a couple of papers per quarter. I’m not talking about “writing” courses (I don’t know if there were any); we were supposed to have learned the basic mechanics of writing in HS. I’m talking about writing assignments for liberal arts courses, often requiring analysis of primary source reading material. They were graded by a professors and sometimes returned with extensive written comments. I don’t know how that would be possible in courses with 50+ (or 200+) students. Maybe the TAs are grading just as many papers, and doing just as good a job, at some large schools. Ask around.</p>
<p>Like you, tk, I doubt that writing is much of a component of courses greater than 50 in size. But that is not the size of most courses at most colleges of any kind. I, too, suspect that LACs are going to put greater overall demands on writing than B10 schools, but I’m not sure we can make such generalizations between particular colleges, say, Mills College and Ohio State. At Mills the classes might be smaller on average than at OSU, but each professor is teaching more courses (perhaps 4+4 or 4+5 per year) than at OSU (perhaps 2+3 or 2+2 or even 2+1, with TAs). If you want to know how much attention your students are getting from their profs, don’t forget to ask about teaching load per rank as well as class sizes in your intended major. </p>
<p>I had a friend who attended UCLA and graduated with a degree in Econ. He said that other than the required lower-division required writing courses he never had to write a paper to get his degree! </p>
<p>How did he do this? Econ is one of the most popular majors so the classes were always around 80-100 or more and there were no papers (I just looked in the schedule of classes, this is still true for upper-division Econ classes). After that to fill in the upper-division units required for his degree he’d take the more general courses from various departments such as “European History” which again had 100+ and no papers.</p>
<p>This was a few years back, don’t know if it is still true. But if this experience is a guide, more popular majors at large publics do seem to have less writing that you’d see at a LAC.</p>
<p>It depends on what courses you take and what LAC you go to. Generally though, a course in an LAC will have more writing than the corresponding course in a “normal” college.</p>
<p>Economics courses might not be representative of H/SS subjects in terms of writing, since they may emphasize problem solving akin to math and statistics courses. But no papers in an upper division history course seems odd.</p>
<p>Just to throw out one wrinkle: if it’s a real college (meaning, no - or very few - graduate students), the professors devote more attention to undergraduates, and the classes are likely smaller. On the other hand, universities are crawling with TAs. Even a reasonably diligent professor is going to be quicker</p>
<p>(a) to give out an assignment to the 150 people in his class, knowing that it’ll requires his 5 TAs each to read and grade 30 papers,</p>
<p>than he would be</p>
<p>(b) to give out an assignment to the 30 people in his class, knowing it’ll require HIM to read and grade 30 papers.</p>
<p>A history course without any paper almost sounds like a contradiction in terms. It’s like a writing class with no writing.</p>
<p>Wow, thank you so much for the info! I’m a pre-med, and my problem is that I can THINK of the ideas, but it’s like giving birth to a kid when I try to write on a piece of paper. My dad and I were debating whether LACs were worth it. Though, I was leaning more into UCI or USC recently.</p>
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<p>No, it’s not. However, classes of more than 50 students (sometimes much more) are not uncommon at many state universities. At Mills, zero classes have 50 or more; its S:F ratio is 10:1. At Ohio State, 23% of classes have 50 or more students; the S:F ratio is 19:1. The percentage of large classes would be higher than that in intro-intermediate courses or in popular majors at TOSU. </p>
<p>If we’re comparing most universities and LACs of roughly equal selectivity/rank, I think it’s safe to assume (absent metrics that show otherwise) that the LAC students get more class discussion and more writing assignments in typical classes, especially for the first two years. A higher level of faculty attention is after all a major reason to choose a LAC (if you want it, that is.) The trade-off is more limited course selection. </p>
<p>I’m not too clear, though, about how TAs might affect this pattern at some big research universities. Berkeley’s average class sizes are among the smallest of any research university. It still has many very large lecture classes, but they typically are accompanied by break-out sections led by TAs. These sections often have 25-30 students (according to the online course schedules). That still would be a lot of 5 or 10 page papers to grade, especially if you’re pursuing your own doctoral research. So I’m skeptical that very many research universities leverage TAs to provide as much writing and discussion as you’d get at a small school where 70% of classes have fewer than 20 students, all taught by professors. </p>
<p>Hmmm, I just did a tour at UCI today (Amazing campus btw!). I entered in one of their lecture halls and sat there for thirty minutes. Although there were about two hundred students, I didn’t feel too overwhelmed. Wasn’t that big of a deal. Plus since I was sitting at the back row, I saw most students back either sleeping or texting. </p>
<p>Should I still give it a shot and apply to LACs?</p>
<p>So… I hate to give this advice…but GPA is critical for a pre-med student. If you aren’t the strongest writing, you might be better off at a university where there is less writing. (Okay, I can’t believe I just advised that, because OF COURSE strong writing skills are useful in any profession and college is a great time to develop it). Now… at an LAC, you may get more help in science and math courses if you struggle – easier to get time with your profs at office hours, and often you find better teaching at an LAC than a research university. So that could be to your benefit. (There, now I feel better!)</p>
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<p>A student motivated to go to instructors’ office hours may actually benefit from a big lecture with TA discussions, since there are more possible instructors (the faculty member and the TAs – the bigger the class, the more TAs there are to choose from) to ask help from (and greater likelihood that at least some will be available). Of course, if you categorically prefer faculty for this purpose, then the smaller the class, the better.</p>
<p>Mmm… lots of my TAs at a large research university didn’t speak English that well. And many (not all) were teaching as a way to fund their PhDs so they could become researchers. It wasn’t always an option to “TA hop” for help, they wanted us to go to our own TAs, and some of them covered the material at different paces and depths. And many of the professors were busy with grad students and their own research, and weren’t going to spend a lot of time with undergrads. I don’t get the impression that things have changed much in those environments…</p>
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As much as I hate to debunk that amusingly rosy view of graduate student life, I can assure you that TAs can and routinely do grade as many (if not more) papers a term as any LAC professor on top of our own classes and research. I’ve taught 50 students a quarter for the past five years – you REALLY don’t want to see how many exams and assignments I’ve had to grade each term. </p>
<p>It’s the medium classes that allow a student to skate by, classes in the 50-80 (or so) student range. They’re too large for a professor to grade writing assignments but often too small to require TAs. Sometimes they even have multiple choice/scantron exams. A decidedly meh way of teaching college classes, IMO.</p>
<p>warblersrule, how representative do you think your experience is in your field at your university? You’re at UCLA, the 2nd highest ranked state university in the country, right? Do you believe that (due to the efforts of graduate student TAs) UCLA undergraduates typically get in as much class discussion and writing as students do at schools like Bates, Smith, or Macalester? Do you think it is likely that UC-Irvine undergrads are getting as much discussion and writing as students typically get at Whitman, Kenyon, or Mt. Holyoke?</p>
<p>If you think you are grading as many papers as any LAC professor would, is that because a typical undergraduate in a typical class at your university probably is getting about as many writing assignments per term as s/he would at a LAC? Or is it only because you have more students per instructor than you’d have in an average class a LAC?</p>
<p>UCLA (USNWR #23 university) has an S:F ratio of 17:1; 50% of its classes have < 20 students.
Oberlin (USNWR #23 LAC) has an S:F ratio of 9:1; 77% of its classes have < 20 students.
Of course, S:F numbers don’t tell the whole story. Schools no doubt are not all counting classes or instructors the same way. </p>
<p>@tk21769 The short answer is that yes, I think it holds true for the top (public) universities and those that use TAs a lot. Among regional/MA universities, writing assignments may be less frequent. Of course, the subject matter of the course and the professor teaching it all play a significant role in how any given class is taught, so generalizations can only be very broad. I sent you a rather lengthy PM with more detailed thoughts. </p>