<p>Hi, I am hoping a current student or parent can comment on this. Along with a few other schools, my son is looking very seriously at UR and somewhat seriously at the University of Michigan. Well, he is looking at U of M mainly to satisfy his alum parents, we both like the proximity, in state tuition and education. That being said, all three of us are intrigued and very impressed by UR-we have a friend who is a grad, and my son enjoyed his campus visit and interview. We were very happy and excited when he received his acceptance earlier in the week. One thing he doesn't like about U of M is the average class size-he attends a smallish private high school and is used to active give and take with his teachers. Even I am starting to admit I cannot envision him in the huge intro level lecture classes at U of M and think that UR is probably a better fit. My question is, is UR much better with respect to intro courses? I have seen the stats on the undergrad class sizes, that there are only 37 classes with more than 100. I have to imagine most if not all of those classes are intro classes, and am curious how much bigger than 100 the classes might be. And what is typical once past the intro courses? My son is interested in a political science major, if that helps.</p>
<p>Yes the intro classes are large, but still small compared to many other schools. In the sciences at least I don’t think there are ever more than about 300 in a classes. My daughter has had foreign language classes that have as few as 6-8 students in them. From what my daughter has told me I would say 40 is about the average class size at least in the classes she has taken.</p>
<p>It really depends what kinds of classes your son is taking. I am pretty sure, since he is interested in Poly-sci, that the intro classes are typically “big” as in 200-300ish students. I am currently taking chemistry and biology at the UoR and the classes are, I would say, not over 300 people. In addition, there are only 25 people in my math class since I am taking an upper level math. I have heard from my friends that go to Cornell that their intro science classes are actually huge, huge as in 700-800 people sitting in one lecture hall. </p>
<p>I would say that upper level of classes your son takes, the less people that will be in the class because the material is getting more in depth and specific. I am not exactly sure how poly-sci works once pass the intro classes, but I do know that in chemistry, students are not getting into smaller classes until, I would say, junior year because intro chem and orgo classes tend to be big lecture classes, and a lot of students here typically will take those classes simply to fulfill the pre-med requirements.</p>
<p>This is the link to the online course catalogue, <a href=“https://cdcs.ur.rochester.edu/[/url]”>https://cdcs.ur.rochester.edu/</a> The information for each course includes the total course enrollment (which I think is the number of people actually enrolled) and the total course cap (limit as to how many can enroll). I think that some courses are cross listed in different departments, and at times there are “section” caps for a particular course number, so I think you need to look at the total enrollment to get a sense of the actual numbers in the class.</p>
<p>thanks so much, especially for the link and the tip about different departments.</p>
<p>There is no comparison in scale. Much of my family - both brothers, my dad, etc. - went to UofM and I went to law school there. UR is like a college compared to Michigan. I went to a school the same size as UR. The experience is much more intimate: like a big college with the resources of a much bigger university. It isn’t so much that classes are all smaller: a) the pool of people is smaller so you tend to recognize and thus know more people and b) the physical size is radically smaller so you cross paths a lot more often. You can cross all of the UR campus including the medical area in less time than it takes to get to North Campus.</p>
<p>That said, one of my brothers came from our smallish private school in Michigan and was a junior year Phi Beta Kappa, so I can’t say the size of the school was a negative.</p>