<p>I realize this is really relative to each person's perspective. </p>
<p>I think a school with 1200 students seems way to small, while schools with 2200 students seems fine, but maybe a school with 5000 students would be better. 20.000 students seems way too big. </p>
<p>I have seen comments from students who attended schools with 5000 students and later wished they went to a bigger school.</p>
<p>How can a student judge that a school will still "fit him or her" by the time they are upper classmen in college? </p>
<p>There are VERY few schools with 20,000+ students that are not Public. Just a few top 100 ranked privates like Boston University, George Washington, NYU, USC are that large.</p>
<p>The real drawback with size is lack of school-initiated, systemic mentoring of the student. The student must make an effort to seek out resources is such large schools. Those that do seek out mentoring do fine, those that do not, due to ignorance, lack of initiative, or other reasons, can develop a me vs. them, survival of the fittest perspective… Althouth those very large privates are probably more proactive in mentoring students than the very large Flagship Publics (e.g. Berkeley, UCLA, Michigan, UNC, Wisconson, Illinois, Texas, Penn St, etc. etc.), it is logistically extremely difficult if not impossible for those very large Privates to mentor in the same way schools can that are half or a third their size.</p>
<p>I think the ideal college size is about 12,000-15,000, undergraduate and graduate combined population. That’s just me. Some would certainly reach a greater potential in a school with 5,000, others at a school with 2.500.</p>
<p>Most of the schools I’m applying to are under 5,000 ( publics TCNJ and rutgers are the exception )</p>
<p>You’re right it all depends on the student. I wanted a small student body with small classes where the professor actually knows my name. I didnt want large lecture halls with 200+ kids in attendance which is why I’m mostly applying to small colleges. Oh also most larger universities utilize TAs, uhh yeah not a fan of those. I guess the trade off for personal attention is not having larger facilities for research per se.</p>
<p>The **possible **problems with schools that are too small are…</p>
<p>1) fewer choices of majors and specialites (so if you change majors, you may have to change schools).</p>
<p>2) only one Prof teaches various courses, so if you don’t like a few particular profs, you’ll be stuck taking them since they are the only ones teaching those needed courses.</p>
<p>3) fewer on-campus eating venues</p>
<p>4) fewer on-campus housing choices</p>
<p>5) less EC activities or recreation opportunites.</p>
<p>6) less likely to have any big sports to watch.</p>
<p>I like schools in the 15k-25k undergrad range - but only if the campus is “laid out” in an intelligent fashion. :)</p>
<p>I also like these bigger schools IF they have honors programs.</p>
<p>I shouldn’t have said “IF”…because I generally like bigger schools either way. </p>
<p>That said, I do like schools that have opportunities for current students to qualify for honors programs. And, I like ones that if you have the minimum req’ts, you’ll get accepted.</p>