To Transfer or Not? Tufts, Northwestern

<p>Sam Lee, Michigan’s faculty is also much larger than NU’s. As the links above show, Michigan’s Psychology faculty is more than 3 times larger than NU’s while its English faculty is more than twice larger.</p>

<p>I was in a popular major at NU. The majority of classes in my major had over 100 students. Pretty much all of my Gen eds were 100 + also. If you want the majority of your classes to be discussion based and small, I would never recommend NU(or any research university).</p>

<p>Haystack,
According to 09-10 common data set, 45 of the 1882 class sections had over 100+ students. Yet, the majority of your 45 courses required for graduation had over 100 students?? Your story just doesn’t seem to add up.</p>

<p>Just off the top of my head…large lecture clases I took at NU (maybe I should have said 75+). This was a few years ago so I can’t remember everything, I do know that none of these were in any way discussion based.</p>

<p>Am Gov and Politics
US History I
Us History II
Intro to Intl Relations
Canadian Politics
Law and the Political Arena
Macro
Micro
Human Geography
Highlights of Astronomy
North American geography
History of Philosophy
Intro to Am Lit
Public Finance
Intro to Urban Politics
New Testament
Legislative Process</p>

<p>I am sure that I am missing some. It only took about 2 minutes to come up with 17/45 courses. I’ll bet if I looked at my transcript I could come up with another 8 or so large lecture classes.</p>

<p>Alexandre,</p>

<p>Just because it got 3 times more faculty doesn’t mean it offers three times more courses, which is what you seem to implicitly assume. In fact, according to common data set, UM offers 2 times more courses in the fall <em>semester</em> than NU in the fall <em>quarter</em>. The factor is less than 2 once you consider that NU has three quarters. This explains partially the following difference: at NU, 40% of the classes have less than 10 students and 2.3% of them have greater than 100 students; at UM, 15% of the class have less than 10 students and 6.8% of them have greater than 100 students. </p>

<p>The point is while NU (and its private peers) is no LAC, it’s also not the same as big state U.</p>

<p>Haystack,</p>

<p>40% of the classes have less than 10 students; so apparently, you just didn’t take advantage of that probably because of your particular major. But I wouldn’t let your experience to generalize.</p>

<p>Sam Lee, I have learned not to take class size statistics too seriously. They can be awefully misleading. They certainly do not apply to students in popular majors such as Economics, Political Science or Psychology. The way a university reports class size and the way it develops its curriculum play a large role in determining those statistics. This has been made very clear to me when Cal and JHU almost magically changed their class size composition from ~50% (classes with fewer than 20) / ~20% (classes with more than 50) mix to ~65% / ~15% in just one or two years. </p>

<p>Schools like Cornell, Dartmouth and Notre Dame have class size statistics closer to Michigan than to Northwestern or Penn. Few would argue that Northwestern and Penn have smaller classes than Dartmouth or Notre Dame. </p>

<p>What I have noticed over the years (and I have scrutinized this matter substantially) is that Michigan generally has larger intro-level classes in popular subjects but virtually identical class sizes in intro-level classes in less popular subjects to its private peers. At the intermediate level, the gap in class size will decrease significantly and will become non-existant at the advanced level.</p>

<p><a href=“https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:73mZLyoJ0nQJ:https://www.lsa.umich.edu/UMICH/lsa_alumni/Home/_TOPNAV_LSA%2520Fact%2520Sheet/lsa_fact_sheet_09-10.pdf+&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESgbVU9QW2DctMR2WTjkik-Ay6LREZS-BcCzLGnN9jo_jT8wwGEk5CFxIhO0MAUOQHXH0dR_3ocM5hZJBR1n62bnghdFN0qi8tzOmiV3UaHQXnLoy3CHYXuWcf9VwrChGIZJhVlK&sig=AHIEtbQIW1_-hTcsdQ0lgNtPNB6NVD_3RQ&pli=1[/url]”>https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:73mZLyoJ0nQJ:https://www.lsa.umich.edu/UMICH/lsa_alumni/Home/_TOPNAV_LSA%2520Fact%2520Sheet/lsa_fact_sheet_09-10.pdf+&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESgbVU9QW2DctMR2WTjkik-Ay6LREZS-BcCzLGnN9jo_jT8wwGEk5CFxIhO0MAUOQHXH0dR_3ocM5hZJBR1n62bnghdFN0qi8tzOmiV3UaHQXnLoy3CHYXuWcf9VwrChGIZJhVlK&sig=AHIEtbQIW1_-hTcsdQ0lgNtPNB6NVD_3RQ&pli=1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>[Gains</a> In Chemistry Grads Persist | Back of Book | Chemical & Engineering News](<a href=“http://pubs.acs.org/cen/email/html/8747acs1.html]Gains”>http://pubs.acs.org/cen/email/html/8747acs1.html)</p>

<p>Michigan conferred 484 Political Science, 233 History, and 140 Mathematics degrees in 2009. It also granted 83 bachelors degrees in Chemistry in 2008.</p>

<p>Sam, do you have the number for NU undergrads in these same departments for any given year? I would be shocked if they were anymore than 25% of that size in any of those 4 departments.</p>

<p>Alexandre, the only departments at Michigan that are “intimate” are Physics, Classics, and perhaps Philosophy. Northwestern and other leading private schools hold a massive edge over Michigan with regards to small class sizes in virtually every other field of study.</p>

<p>Alexandre,</p>

<p>NU has smaller classes than Notre Dame. They have about the same number of undergrads but NU has more courses in one quarter than ND in one semester. NU is a bit larger than say, Stanford & Harvard but it has six colleges. Only half of the students are in arts & sciences and the student body in arts & sciences is smaller than that at Harvard/Stanford.</p>

<p>“Alexandre, the only departments at Michigan that are “intimate” are Physics, Classics, and perhaps Philosophy.”</p>

<p>Please show actual numbers to verify your claims. If you cannot, then once again you are talking out of your *ss.</p>

<p>To put this UM vs. NU class size squabble in perspective, at one LAC we visited last summer, we asked the tour guide (a rising senior) how many kids were in the largest class she’d attended.</p>

<p>Twenty-eight.</p>

<p>Exactly to the point annasdad. If the OP wants an intimate collegiate experience, a LAC is really the way to go.</p>

<p>annasdad,</p>

<p>That doesn’t mean that LAC doesn’t have any class greater than 100 students.</p>

<p>Here’s the common data set for Williams: <a href=“http://provost.williams.edu/files/11_12_common_data_set_final.pdf[/url]”>http://provost.williams.edu/files/11_12_common_data_set_final.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>2-9
NU 40%
Williams 38%
UMich 15%</p>

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<p>Once again, the data show NU (or its private peers) is somewhere between LAC and big state U. </p>

<p>The OP didn’t even apply for LAC. The issue is if NU would offer MORE intimate collegiate experience and it looks like it does.</p>

<p>Haystack, you’re my age, right? Mid-late forties? I agree that in my era, I had a few of those large lecture classes (I took some of the same ones you mentioned, like Law in the Political Arena and North American Geography - in places like Tech Aud and Harris Hall and Leverone, after all that’s why they have lecture halls in addition to classrooms) - but it does appear to be different today based on my son’s experience so far. </p>

<p>Then again, I loved taking an intro econ class from someone who had been an economic adviser to several presidents and still routinely got calls from them, so the fact that there were a lot of people in the class was really irrelevant to me.</p>

<p>goldenboy
pol sci 138 (includes B. Phil from school of continuing studies which hold evening classes for adults)
history 68 (includes B. Phil from school of continuing studies)
math 50 (includes B. Phil from school of continuing studies)
chemistry 21</p>

<p>As I suspected, Northwestern has about a quarter of the enrollment of UMich in most disciplines. No amount of data manipulation is going to make me believe there isn’t a difference in academic atmosphere between Northwestern and Michigan.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Head slap! Of course! How could I have missed that! It does indeed have a class over 100 students!</p>

<p>One.</p>

<p>2-9 students: 123 classes
10-19 students: 213 classes
20-29 students: 121 classes
30-39 students: 29 classes
40-49 students: 0 classes
50-99 students: 2 classes
100+ students: 1 class</p>

<p><a href=“http://www5.wittenberg.edu/sites/default/files/CDS_2011-2012.pdf[/url]”>http://www5.wittenberg.edu/sites/default/files/CDS_2011-2012.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>The OP has apparently chosen Northwestern.</p>

<p>Best of luck to you, OP. I wish you well.</p>

<p>But what you do from this point forward will determine how successful your college experience will be. Just going to a “dream school” does not guarantee that you will get the most out of your four years.</p>

<p>Here’s a quote from a book written, as it happens, by a Northwestern faculty member:</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>[Amazon.com:</a> The Thinking Student’s Guide to College: 75 Tips for Getting a Better Education (Chicago Guides to Academic Life) (9780226721156): Andrew Roberts: Books](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/The-Thinking-Students-Guide-College/dp/0226721159]Amazon.com:”>http://www.amazon.com/The-Thinking-Students-Guide-College/dp/0226721159)</p>

<p>I’m not flogging Roberts’s book (though at $4 for the Kindle edition, it’s a great buy). But the advice he offers is solid, and following it will lead to a more successful college career, no matter where you spend that career.</p>

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</p>

<p>Good thing that no one has ever said that going to a “dream school” doesn’t mean that the student doesn’t have to put in his or her own best effort to get the most out of it.</p>

<p>But if you’ll look at the quote from Roberts’s book I just posted, it is obvious that whether or not anyone has ever said it, there are a lot of students who believe it.</p>