Small School vs Large School

[marvin100]

At large schools some majors are small and therefore have small classes. If you plan to go to a large school do some research on your specific major as that will probably define your academic experience. For example, my school is a premed giant, so 300 level chem and bio classes are 300 person lectures. I’m in a less popular major, I’m going to have less than 20 people in my 300 levels classes. In large schools it is possible to have tremendous amounts of variance in academic prestige so definitely look into that as well.

Counterpoint: If small classes are of value to you, then small colleges will more reliably fulfill that desire.

[NoVADad99]

In some large schools, the Honors College will cap class sizes. At the University of Alabama, I heard the Dean of the College of Engineering say that the Honors College classes are capped at max. 50 students, some are even smaller, like 15 students.

[ucbalumnus]

@WalknOnEggShells

My daughter is thinking of majoring in Math, and that’s something I’ve considered when looking at schools with large numbers of premed or engineering students.

Some medical schools do require calculus and/or statistics. However, some schools have different versions of these courses for biology majors (pre-meds usually take the biology major version of courses, unless they are in a major that requires a different version) versus the ones for math or engineering majors. Some schools offer honors courses, which tend to be much smaller than the regular versions.

Also, many math majors are advanced in math, so they may be starting in a more advanced math course (e.g. starting in sophomore level math avoids most pre-meds, and starting in junior level math avoids most non-math majors).

@WalknOnEggShells

I compared Geneseo and Depauw recently, and the difference in class size was significant. One example of a smallish school (6300 kids) that didn’t have the smaller class sizes I was expecting is University Of Rochester. The intro Computer Science courses are big - around 180 students if I remember correctly, at least for the first course.

CS is grown in popularity recently. Even small schools may have large introductory CS courses (e.g. around 200 at Harvey Mudd), though they can be even bigger at large schools (700-1100 or so).

[ucbalumnus]

@marvin100

Counterpoint: If small classes are of value to you, then small colleges will more reliably fulfill that desire.

Of course, there is always trying to find the balance point. If the department is very small (more common at smaller schools), then its offerings may be just at the bare minimum, with each offered every other year. If you value both small classes and a reasonably large offering of classes offered every year, you need to check the catalogs and schedules of the departments of interest at each college to see if it fulfills one or both desires.