“do you feel like the attention (deficit) from professors detracts from how much you learn?”
No. Wherever you go to college, you’ll teach yourself most of what you need to know for any given class, even if it’s a seminar. There’s simply too much to cover everything in class. When my friends and I recently looked at our Stanford admission reader sheets, we laughed at the fact that while our files had scores in categories like “Testing” and “Intellectual Vitality,” they should have had an “Autodidact” category since self-teaching is such an important skill in college. In general, the amount of effort you’re willing to put into learning is the primary determinant of how much you’ll learn. For example, you could daydream during a seminar and not learn anything but pay attention in lecture and learn everything. I don’t think that large lectures per se detract from learning, but I do think that some of the consequences of large lectures (i.e., sitting far away from a professor in a huge lecture hall with lots of students) lead to tendencies that are not conducive to learning (i.e., web-surfing during lecture). That said, there are many things that you can do to improve your learning in lecture, so much so that a large lecture begins to feel like a seminar. For example, I always sit in the very front row of all of my large lecture classes. This is a great way not just to stay focused but also for the professor to get to know me in spite of the course’s size. It’s a bit difficult to ignore someone you always see in the front row. Also, many professors incorporate sample problems in lecture that the entire class discusses amongst itself. For some classes, you need to input your responses to these questions in a “clicker”, which is a device that tracks your answers and allows the professor to give you credit for attending lecture. While students are working out the answers to these questions, the professor will ofter walk around the lecture hall and check in on students’ progress. This attests to the fact that professors in large lectures are not apathetic about their students’ learning. Another thing I do to make a large lecture class feel “smaller” is to go to the professor’s office hours. If you go to office hours at the right time (i.e., early in the morning), you have a pretty high chance of having a one-on-one discussion with the professor, and the discussion doesn’t have to just be about the course. Most professors are professors in large part because they love helping students, not just with coursework but also with general life/career advice. Furthermore, many professors in large lecture classes clearly pour their heart and soul into the class. This is especially true in the intro classes. For example, Autumn Quarter I took CS103 with a fabulous lecturer named Keith Schwarz. The class had about 300 people in it. Despite its size, I emailed Keith with a question and he responded to me in less than a minute. One of my friends emailed the professor for CS106A the day before the midterm exam, and he answered within minutes despite CS106A having over 600 students. As you can see, you can really make a large class feel pretty small if you do the right things. In general, at Stanford you are limited only by your motivation.
“Are there smaller sections which make it easier to learn?”
Most large lecture classes have some form of smaller section that meets every week to go over the material from lecture. I am a section leader for CS106A/B/X, Stanford’s three intro programming courses. Each of these classes has three lectures per week, and in addition to attending lecture, students also attend section for an hour once a week. Each section contains about 10 students and a section leader. During section, we just do programming problems as a group, and students can ask the section leader any questions about the material. Your section leader also grades all of your assignments, providing individualized feedback in the form of a 10-minute conference on each assignment. There is even a room at Stanford called the Computer LAIR which is staffed with section leaders from Sunday through Thursday (typically until about 2 am). Any student in the CS106s can easily come to the LAIR with questions about any assignment.
Sections are not just limited to CS. There are sections for Physics, Math, and most other classes (including Humanities/Social Science classes). Most large classes also have very elaborate support systems like the LAIR. Physics, for example, has the Physics Tutoring Center. Classes that don’t have sections usually have a cohort of TAs who hold office hours throughout the week. If you have any questions about the course, you can just go to office hours. Or as I said above, you could just go to the professor directly. In fact, last week I had questions on a problem set, and instead of going to office hours, I just asked the professor after class. She stayed behind for about 30 minutes to help me, which was very gracious.
“A professor’s attention is more important to me in the humanities/social sciences than in the other general areas of study, so let me know what your experience was like in those classes(?)”
Again, what you get out is what you put in. You will learn a lot if you put effort into paying attention in lecture, and you will get to know the professor if you sit in the front and go to office hours. As far as the social sciences specifically are concerned, last year I took a PoliSci class taught by the chief advisor to the Romney campaign, and she knew not just my name but also everyone else’s name. She even Skyped with every student at least twice during the quarter, and this was a 100-person class. In general, getting the attention of professors is less of a problem in the humanities/social science classes because they typically aren’t as big as the STEM classes. Some classes even have enrollment caps. Condoleezza Rice’s class is, I think, capped at about 20 students. She reads all of the students’ essays/work in that class.
“Also, I have been looking for the course requirements for all undergrads for days now and cannot find anything. Is there a link you can share?”
All Stanford students need to fulfill the WAYS:
https://undergrad.stanford.edu/programs/ways/ways
There is also a Thinking Matters requirement:
https://undergrad.stanford.edu/programs/thinking-matters
And the PWR (i.e., writing) requirement:
https://undergrad.stanford.edu/programs/pwr
And lastly the language requirement, which you can fulfill with an AP test:
https://web.stanford.edu/dept/lc/language/requirement/
Note that you can do the SLE program during your freshman year and knock out most of these requirements in one fell swoop:
https://undergrad.stanford.edu/programs/residential-programs/sle
This program would put you in close contact with some of the best humanities scholars in the world, many of whom love SLE students and want to help them become the next generation of great scholars.