<p>I know Chicago has a lot of graduate students. Does that mean that quite a bit of freshman/sophomore teaching is actually done by TAs? </p>
<p>And what about research opportunities in the sciences? With so many grad students, Surely most of the lab work is done by grad students, leaving fewer research opportunities for undergraduates, right?</p>
<p>Thanks for any info on either of these questions.</p>
<p>there is a big thread on this in the main forum, if it isn't you who started that one.</p>
<p>Sorry. I couldn't find my thread on the site and thought I hadn't successfully posted my question. Thanks for letting me know that my thread does exist! I'll look for it.</p>
<p>Every core class is taught by a professor, and they are limited to I think 25 students, although it might less than that.</p>
<p>Every core class also has TA's, but they are most definitely not the "teachers" of the class.</p>
<p>I'm pretty sure this is how all the classes work. I might have seen a figure once that said something like 99% of classes are taught by professors.</p>
<p>But if you're just looking for a non-exact answer, the VAST majority of undergraduate classes are taught by professors (often with the help of TAs).</p>
<p>I was a TA for several Math courses at Chicago, and I know TAs do not teach classes. Maybe by TAs, you meant grad school students. Surprisingly, most TAs for undergrad courses are all undergrads themselves, myself included and I started as a second year. TAs give you homework help and hold tutorials/homework sessions. All my courses were taught by profs. every single one of the 36+ courses.</p>
<p>That's just not true. </p>
<p>HUM and CIV are taught almost entirely by professors, but other core and lower level classes (including core SOSC) are often taught by lecturers (non-professors with PhDs) and grad student instructors (graduate students who have finished most of their coursework). Upper level small seminars are often professors, but just as often advanced grad students teaching about their fields of interest.</p>
<p>A TA, by definition, assists with teaching a class, so no TAs teach whole classes except as substitutes or for specific topics within a course.</p>
<p>Grad students starting teaching can be uninspired, but generally you aren't getting a bad deal at all (A PhD does not magically give you the ability to lecture or lead discussion well), and you can avoid them if you don't like taking grad-taught classes on principle.</p>
<p>All in all, I'd guess undergrad classes are something like half faculty, ~10% lecturers and the rest grad students, though that varies by department, and nearly all larger or intro-sequence-of-major classes (over 30) are going to have full professors.</p>