<p>Berkeley, Mcgill, Cornell, Upenn, UCLA, UNC, and so on.</p>
<p>They are very competitive and good colleges.</p>
<p>One problem is, They ALL have too much students.</p>
<p>Is this matter?</p>
<p>Especially, studying physics or math.</p>
<p>Anybody? Bump</p>
<p>No it doesn't matter - what are you concerned about?</p>
<p>It is concern. There is tradeoff between size and personal attention. I found math very important to have small class. All college mentioned are good. But if you can get in them, you could get in real good small college with much more personal attention. All such small college have math and physic. Check out Williams, Amherst, Pomona, Wesleyan, Holy Cross, Bowdoin, Colby, Swarthmore, Haverford, Davidson, Occidental, Grinnell, Carlton College, Kenyon, Harvey Mudd, Bucknell, and Colgate. Also check out small universities like Tufts, Chicago, Dartmouth, Northwestern, Brown, Duke, and Stanford. Welcome to the USA. I look forward to working for you some day.</p>
<p>Some will argue the bigger universities still have small classes. But I think a smaller student body has so many benefits. The administration feels focused on you 100% of the time, unlike the bigger schools which function like corporations - take a number please mentality.</p>
<p>upenn doesnt have that many undergrad students compared to the others you mentioned. only around 9-10 thousand.</p>
<p>Personally, I like the atmosphere of a big school. Like slipper mentioned, there is no hand-holding. You're on your own, and your academic life is your responsibility. If you want help in your 300-person lecture, you go get it from the Prof., TAs, etc. "Personal attention" is overrated - there won't be any of that once you graduate, so why should there be any in college?</p>
<p>my humble $.02</p>
<p>Going to a big school really isn't too great if you want a friendly and nice learning environment. You are just learning from Textbooks, At my school (Universtiy of Toronto) which is about the same/bigger than McGill, some teachers just read the text (WORD FOR WORD!!!) so attendance rate goes down exponentially, we had over 1000 students in a lecture at the beginning, now about 100 (and ~10 of them sleep/make out on the balconies in the lecture hall!)
but i don't think a School Such as Penn has problems like these, b/c their class sizes are much smaller.</p>
<p>In addition to what i have posted, i would also like to say at some large institutions you are taught by BITTER TAs who are not doing well in on their road to getting their masters and PhDs. and when they get pi$$ed, your mark plummets!!!! or they just plummetted at the beginning of the year and you never notice a drop :D
although there are a few nice ones, but that's like 1/50 TAs.</p>
<p>I am so glad I never had to deal with T/As.</p>
<p>Slipper, where did you go that didn't have TAs/GSIs?</p>
<p>He went to Smacka Quaker Upside the Head College</p>
<p>Alittlebit, there are negatives and positives to large schools and small schools. On this forum, people tend to blow the disadvantages and advantages way out of proportion, so do not listen to the critics. The only way to benifit is to go to a school that fits your learning style. Some students really benefit from tiny classes, personal attention and a close-knit environment, others thrive in a larger setting that offers more variety and independence.</p>
<p>Just as an aside, although scholls like Columbia, Harvard and Stanford are small, their faculty and administration are not more attentive to the needs of their undergrads than the larger schools you mention.</p>
<p>It's impossible to have too MUCH students. You can only have too MANY students.</p>
<p>...</p>
<p>I don't think Penn has size issues compared to the other schols mentioned. Most of the hummanities and upper level classes are small and the alumni network is very strong despite its large size. Even with big classes, the professors are always accessible and each large class comes with recitations.</p>
<p>And don't talk down about TA's. I've had many TA's that taught better than hardcore research professors. It's not what you know, it's how well you can teach.</p>
<p>I agree with Aurelius. I had a total of 6 or 7 TAs at Michigan (I took over 40 classes). My TAs were restricted to discussion groups, not lectures, but even then, with the exception of one, they all added a great deal to the class. We often forget that those TAs at top 10 PhD programs are geniuses and will one day be top professors at top universities.</p>
<p>I was lucky enough to have amazing teaching professors who also taught the discussion sections!</p>
<p>I don't see your point Slipper. Roughly half my classes had discussion sections, and only a quarter of those were led my PhD students. The remaining three quarters of my discussion groups were led by full-time professors. But in truth, the PhD students were every bit as capable and knowledgeable as the full time faculty they assisted.</p>
<p>I seriously doubt advanced math and physics classes are very large--even at large schools. Not hugely popular majors but well funded due to research $$$ from lots of sources.</p>
<p>Slipper may be stretching the truth on Dartmouth--or just lucky.
From another CC poster
"My daughter has only had 2 terms at Dartmouth, but her classes with 50ish students had TAs to help with papers, hold extra sessions, etc. - all the sciences do, but so did her geography and math class.</p>
<p>Overall, I didn't like the idea of TAs or adjuncts - that was one of the big negatives that I saw in Dartmouth vs her other schools, all of which were smaller LACs. But, honestly, any of these systems can work, and any of these systems can have poor teachers at each particular level. Some full profs will be lousy teachers, some will be good. Some TAs will be able to explain beginning concepts very well, having just gone through the exercise of learning them, others will just hit their strides as teachers when it is time for them to move on. Some adjuncts will bring a fresh perspective to the 1 or 2 classes they teach, others are just being abused.
I think a lot of adaptation goes on, on the part of the students - they quickly learn which classes to take and which to avoid - they are survivors."</p>
<p>Large is not necessarily bad. Look at the course catalog for the schools you are considering. Do the departments have the kind of courses that would interest you for all four years of school? </p>
<p>At Cornell, the physics department is large enough to offer regular and accelerated first-year courses, and more advanced courses than you could take in just four years. Their math department offers many levels of calculus for first and second year students, and gives accelerated undergraduate students a chance to take graduate-level courses. That is the strength of a large university.</p>
<p>If you are afraid of getting lost socially in a large school, you may want to look at some of the smaller technical schools that have strong departments in physics and math, but not in the liberal arts. You have probably heard of Caltech and MIT, but you should also look at Harvey Mudd, RPI and Rose Hulman.</p>