I was wondering what a business class might look like and a humanities class, for example.
Also, does everyone move off campus after freshman year? FInally, is the area around campus walkable? Is it a safe area?
THanks!
If you are in the Honors College the honors classes are usually 15 people. You won’t be able to take all your classes as honors however. The introductory classes for core subjects (non honors versions) can be as large as 200 but class sizes get smaller (around 24) as you specialize further in your major. You can log on as a guest on My Bama to take a look at specific class sizes (look under class schedule)
https://bnrsupport.ua.edu/mybamaguest/guest.html
Yes, most students move off campus after freshman year unless they have a medical dispensation to stay or are part of a specific program like Blount Initiative and opt to stay.
The area around campus is generally fine. I’ve read about some incidents every now and then in the local news but my son has never felt unsafe.
@AlbionGirl I don’t think you can see the sizes of the classes without logging in. At least, I don’t seem to be able to.
Unfortunately, I can’t get that info. If you were to take a philosophy or literature class freshman year would that be around 200? I was just wondering if there were any discussion based classes the first year. From what I can see, you need to be have Ivy level stats to get into honors. Thanks again.
You should be able to see the class schedule as a guest without logging in. If you click the link in post #1 and scroll down the page you’ll see a link to class schedule. If you click on that you’ll come to a page where you can pick a term date e.g. Spring 2017. Hit submit and you can pick classes by subject e.g. PHL for philosophy. Hit class search and all the philosophy classes for that term will appear. Then click on the blue class link for each class and you’ll see capacity for each class.
Stats to get into the Honors College can be found here https://honors.ua.edu/admission/
Thanks @AlbionGirl I thought I read that there are minimum stats to apply, but the accepted honor’s students have around a 33 ACT score. Anyway, thanks for your help. Alabama looks very appealing.
My daughter had very reasonably sized classes freshman year. The big lecture classes she encountered were the upper division classes required of all business majors, which she took mostly in sophomore and junior years. I’m going from long-ago memory here, but 1st semester freshman year she had an honors class with 15 students, a CBH class with about 20 students, an English class with 18 students, a Kinesiology class with 25 students, a business law class with 35 students, and a Calculus class with 75 students. The largest class she had freshman year was accounting (2nd semester), which had 99 students. I think this might be different from other courses of study where the big lecture classes occur freshman year.
ETA: Since you specifically asked about a literature class, I can tell you that my daughter’s American Lit class had about 35 students. I don’t think the English classes tend to be all that large. As for honors, you definitely do not need Ivy level stats. You need a 28 ACT or 1250 SAT(I think that’s the old SAT) and a 3.5 GPA. If you have those stats, you will be admitted. The competitive honors programs (University Fellows and CBH) are what require higher stats.
@beth’s mom Thank you! I think I was looking at the Univ Fellows and CBH stats, now that you mention it. I will go back to the website to get honor’s info.
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literature class freshman yea
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Courses from the Honors College are about 15 students max.
Freshman Comp classes are limited to 25 students.
Lit classes are also limited because the prof has to be able to read the essays.
Any class that has essay assignments is going to be rather small…lol…no prof can read/grade 200 essays per assigned literature book!
Philosophy class…my son was a TA for a Philosophy class. It was a MWF class. On MW, the class size was about 60 and the prof lectured. On Fridays, the TA’s each had 12 kids in a lab.
History lectures will be large, unless from the Honors College.
Gen Chem will have a large lecture class, but labs will be about 20 students each.
Dept honors classes tend to be smaller than regular classes.
Like nearly every college, the lower division lecture classes can be larger (except HC classes), but upper division classes are often quite small…sometimes only 7 or 8 students.
@mom2collegekids Very helpful. Thank you:)
@mom2collegekids “Any class that has essay assignments is going to be rather small…lol…no prof can read/grade 200 essays per assigned literature book!” You should give UA more credit for that. Another (cheaper) model is to have large lecture classes with graders assigned to help, which isn’t as good IMO.
I find it disconcerting that many (most?) sophomore and junior level courses in math and CS have enrollments 50+. It seems like one would have to spend some time looking through the course schedule for a particular major to get a full picture of what class sizes are going to be like.
My daughter had majors in both business and math. Her math classes ranged from about 25 students to 75 students, with most being around 50. The Calculus series classes were the largest and the 400 levels were the smallest. She never had an issue with class sizes in math.
I agree, though. It really can vary by department.
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find it disconcerting that many (most?) sophomore and junior level courses in math and CS have enrollments 50+. I
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I don’t know about CS, but I don’t recall my kids (one a math major, the other had a math minor) having large math classes. They both tests out of Calc I, but from then on, it seemed like classes were 45 or less.
There is a difference in class size between honors and regular sections. Here are the current enrollments for Spring 2017, honors/reg, respectively:
Calc I: 36 / 90
Calc II: 48 / 116
Calc III: 48 / 86
Diff EQ: - / 62 (no honors section)
I will say, these bums-on-seats #'s have changed a bit over the years. By comparison, here are the enrollments for Fall 2012:
Calc I: 51 / 88
Calc II: 50* / 75
Calc III: 30 / 47
Diff EQ: - / 48 (no honors section)
*(Honors Calc II is for Spring 2012 instead, because not offered in Fall semester at that time)
Are honor’s classes more demanding and fast paced?
Just to confuse matters more, the difference between the honors section enrollment and regular section enrollment can vary by department as well. For instance, when my daughter took intro to accounting, she was in a non-honors section with roughly 100 students. The honors section had just as many students. Similarly, when she took business law the honors section had 32 students; the regular sections ranged from 27 to 48. On the other hand, when she was a freshman the honors Econ section had 30 students and the regular sections had 250 (I know this from looking it up; my D had AP credit for Econ and didn’t take it at UA). To me, the difference between 30 and 50 isn’t a big deal, but there is an enormous difference in a 30 person classroom vs. a 250 person classroom.
@citymama9 My son, who does not like English took the Honors English his freshman year. That enabled him to combine two semesters of English in one class. He was so happy, his comment: “I never have to take another English class again for the rest of my college career”! 
He had tried to get the class on Bama Bound but couldn’t get into it. Tried all summer at different times, but nothing opened. A mom from the FB page messaged me one evening and told me her son had mentioned there was one spot open. DS went in and took it. So, as I mentioned above, the FB parents are a wonderful source of information and assistance.
His roommate had regular English and DS felt they did far more lengthy papers than the Honors class.
The honors classes can be more interesting and fun too. My son took Honors English with Professor Brandi Hodo and the class was called “To Boldly Go: Science Fiction and Society” He found it a great deal more interesting than English in High School.
@laralei does the honors English advanced comp (103) fulfill the composition gen ed requirement? It’s only a 3 credit class and I thought the requirement was 6 credits of composition.
Yes, EN103 fulfills the freshman composition requirement. After you successfully complete EN103, you are given credit for EN101. It shows on the transcript as ungraded placement credit. So you essentially get 6 credits for EN103.