My daughter, who will be a senior in the fall, really liked the campus & the city of Birmingham when we toured in the spring. UAB is on her shortlist. I am concerned about the larger class sizes (60 people as opposed to the 20 or so in the LACs that we have also seen). Anyone have any experience that they will share about the honors program there?
What is her major? Will she be coming in with any AP credits? If so, which ones?
Where are you seeing 20 as the class sizes for LACs? Which LACs? Where are you seeing that the class sizes at UAB are 60?
Are you looking at “average size” classes?
@SOSConcern can you chime in here? (her DD is a recent UAB grad).
There were a couple of lectures that DD1 had at UAB that had 80/100 students - it never bothered DD, and she went to private school K - 12.
What is DD wanting to study?
DD1 was in an honors program - they changed to where they have I believe one main honors program now. DD had a global opportunity scholarship and was in experiential learning honors program (both have been phased out). She used the global scholarship money for a short course in Zurich Switzerland. Her experiential learning was not specific courses but experiences that she had worthy of approval and writing up as part of the program.
DD1 did not hear great things about the intro psych course (one of the large lecture classes) so she borrowed the class materials from a friend and CLEPed out of the course.
DD1 was in nursing, and in the nursing scholars program, but also took higher level science courses as she is still considering perhaps medical school.
Once in nursing, they might have a lecture with their class (142 BSNs graduated with her after spring term 2016) - we had some parent attended functions in that main lecture hall, and I had no problem with it. They had of course smaller clinical groups. I didn’t see it much different than the nursing program I went to at a small private college, except for the size of the faculty, student body, and the graduate and PhD programs in nursing at UAB.
UAB had some wonderful ceremonial things, and graduation was very nice. They have an alum building and hosted a reception. University Honors had a luncheon with the students receiving their medallion. I met the Honors Dean who has hired in fairly recently.
Are you an AL resident OP?
DD1 completed school on time, but did attend two summers, even with AP (one was her choice, and the other was for the 5 semester upper division nursing).
Students can figure out between AP, CLEP, and local CC or university classes that will work towards their major if one is concerned about keeping to 8 semesters of scholarship.
UAB is a very easy campus to navigate, and the students are friendly. Can send PM if have other than general type of questions.
Thanks for the info on UAB, @SOSConcern - that is helpful to know. We are residents of Illinois, & DD is happy to go to UIC & live at home, if OOS schools do not work out. She does not want to go to UIUC, our state flagship, as she sees it as an extension of high school, and it will be expensive.
She is undecided as to a major, & her interests are all over the place. She has lately mentioned agricultural sciences, buy I worry that if she goes straight into that, she may hate it, and if she’s in the college of Ag at a big school, she’ll have to transfer. (We have relatives far away who have farms, but we live in the suburbs of Chicago!) The only thing she knows for sure is that she wants to study abroad. I feel that college is a time to explore possibilities, so I am okay with her being undecided.
@mom2collegekids, we are looking at average class sizes, those numbers were told to us on tour at UAB & Agnes Scott. (Which she also really liked, for the campus & traditions & feeling of sisterhood, as well as the location). I understand that 100-level courses will have more students. But as she is not a talker, I like the idea of very small classes for her, because she has definite opinions when drawn out.
To answer your other questions, she’ll have 2 AP history, 1 AP govt, 3AP English & Lit, AP psych, & AP environmental science. 30ACT, 3.7 u/w gpa , no “hooks”, decent extracurriculars.
OP - is your DD scholarship eligible?
The ag school in AL is Auburn. My neighbor’s DD, a good student but w/o any scholarship, went to AU for something in AG. She is interning in the AU area or with the University in her field after her sophomore year of school. Last summer she took chemistry at UAHuntsville in order to have just that one class to focus on and not do it during a regular semester at AU.
If she does want nursing, the nursing scholars program at UAB is great. 82% of DD’s nursing class got jobs before graduation, and the rest I am sure have secured a job after passing their national nursing exam. I heard on the radio the highest open job in AL is nursing, and I believe it. Home health and visiting nurse (and Hospice) will continue to grow probably almost exponentially.
UAB offers quite a lot for its size of school.
Maybe she can consider general business, take general classes, and then find what she likes. If good in STEM, look at those majors.
In B’ham also very good place for PT job, internship, etc during school year or summer.
Being in the Chicago area, several of those majors would work great for summer positions while living at home too.
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we are looking at average class sizes, those numbers were told to us on tour at UAB & Agnes Scott. (Which she also really liked, for the campus & traditions & feeling of sisterhood, as well as the location). I understand that 100-level courses will have more students. But as she is not a talker, I like the idea of very small classes for her, because she has definite opinions when drawn out.
To answer your other questions, she’ll have 2 AP history, 1 AP govt, 3AP English & Lit, AP psych, & AP environmental science. 30ACT, 3.7 u/w gpa , no “hooks”, decent extracurriculars.
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Average class size reports can be VERY misleading. Many schools have tiny upper division classes and larger lower division classes for Core/GenEd.
I doubt that UAB reports an average class size of 60. I will see if I can find the real numbers. I’m guessing that it reports an average class size of around 30.
Since your DD will have many/most of her Core/GenEd complete, so she’d likely avoid large classes at UAB anyway.
My kids went to Alabama and had all of their Core/GenEd complete except one had to take a Lit class and a Fine Arts class. The Lit class was small because it was a writing class, and the Fine Arts class was in the Honors College so it was limited to 15 students. So, even at a large uni like Bama, my kids didn’t have large classes.
I found two sources for average class size at UAB
one says 31
the other one says: Most frequent class size 20 - 29
I don’t know what that tour person was talking about. When I saw “60”, I knew that was very wrong. AL universities just don’t have anywhere near that large of average class sizes. They tend to run between 20 - 35 average.
the person may have been talking about typical 101 classes, which are larger everywhere…even likely at small LACs UNLESS they specifically prohibit.
Your DD would be skipping most/all of the 101 classes.
I would steer her away from Ag sciences if she has not been brought up with farm living. She’d soon feel like a fish out of water.
For a science, you may have a larger lecture, and then 20 in lab. That is anywhere.
The largest class I had at small private was physiology, and all 90 or so nursing students were in the same lecture sophomore term. Our biology, chemistry, etc had more sections of lecture.
In a school where almost all of the students have to have a course, they may have a sizable lecture class.
I can see where the avg is going to skewer to a pretty low average student number. However very few places will you have absolutely no large lecture unless one has AP or CLEPed out of certain courses.
Thanks so much @SOSConcern and @Mom2collegekids- very helpful information!