<p>At Cal (and UCLA, UCSD, UCD) - is there much opportunity to get to know your professors and perhaps have some smaller classes as you move beyond the giant introductory classes? Or are class sizes pretty enormous all four years even for the more advanced courses? </p>
<p>That depends on what you take. I was more interested in the popular classes… my smallest CS class was about 80 students. My largest upper div was 300+ students. There’s probably some that are smaller, but small small is unlikely. I usually ended up knowing the GSIs more than the professors.</p>
<p>The connections I’ve made with professors came from being a TA and doing research, but upper div classes themselves not really. Part of it also depends on you, if you go to office hours and talk to your professors, it’s more likely for them to know who you are and for you to get their individual attention. Seminar classes or graduate courses will also be much smaller (as few as a dozen students).</p>
<p>That said, compared to the lower div classes they are still smaller. But that’s because lower div classes tend to have 500-1000 students.</p>
<p>@failure622 How did you feel about your undergrad experience overall? And can you say which UC you attended? Would you have been happier with something smaller like a Mudd?</p>
<p>The growth of CS enrollment everywhere means that CS courses will be relatively large everywhere. While Berkeley’s introductory CS course had over 1,100 students, Stanford and Harvard had over 700 students in their introductory CS courses. Even Harvey Mudd had about 200 students in its introductory CS course each semester last year.</p>
<p>@CollegeBargain This is the Berkeley section, I went to Berkeley. 
Definitely happy with the program there, the students and faculty are amazing, and I have no regrets about it. I generally didn’t find the large class sizes to be a problem, since the GSIs are usually pretty good too, and you get individual attention from them during section and office hours.</p>
<p>I went to Cal Day and really enjoyed the time at Soda Hall - the students and the professors. </p>