While we are waiting... can any current UC Davis students talk about freshman classes?

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of California - Davis
1

Davis is one of my kid’s top choices and based on Naviance from her school she has a good shot of getting in. A couple of her other choices are small LACs. She’s a likely bio or psych major (or major in one, minor in the other) and has already gotten 4’s or 5’s in AP Calc AB, AP Bio, and a couple that aren’t related to her major area, and is taking AP Stats and AP Psych this year (and another one not in her major area).

So I’m just wondering if someone could talk about how freshman year will look as far as size of classes? Did you have big lectures for a couple of classes and a couple of smaller seminars? (What does ‘smaller’ look like? 40? 20?). (BTW she and her dad did the regular tour there. I’ve wandered around on my own but didn’t get the spiel). In the big lectures, did you feel that the professors were good? Easy to access during office hours? TAs who know what they are doing?

If you considered any smaller schools and ended up picking Davis, are you happy with your decision?

Thanks!

2

I’m currently a third year, so my memory might be a bit hazy on details. I can definitely answer from what I remember, though.

Fall quarter: I was just working on linguistics classes at this point because I hadn’t decided to look into computer science. 13 units.
German 1: 8am class, which kind of sucked. The class had 25 people in it and was taught by a graduate student, who I thought was very good. My understanding is that there was/is a head professor that coordinates the TAs for the lower level German classes at least. I never saw her except for a couple times when she showed up to evaluate our instructor, though.
Linguistics 1: Big lecture, 200ish people. I really liked the professor (Corina), and he was very approachable. We had our discussion weekly that had around 30 people in it, and the TA was very good. Actually, I’ve had that same TA for a few other linguistics classes.
Anthro 2: ~60 people, I wound up in an “overflow” section away from the “main” section taught by an actual professor. Taught by a grad student, thought he was decent but boring (though that may just be because I’m not all that interested in anthro). We met two times per week for 2 hours each day, so no discussion technically.

Winter quarter: The CS prereqs start, 17 units
German 2: Same instructor as German 1. The class was down to about 18 at this point.
ECS 30: Ah, my first class with Sean Davis…painful at the time but so rewarding in the long run. We had a 350ish person lecture, and broke into 4 approximately equal-sized discussions once per week. I actually had Sean as my “TA” for the discussion section, so I got the main instructor the whole time. He’s a really good instructor, but he makes you work your butt off.
Companion animal biology: I thought this class was really cool. There was a 250ish person lecture, and smaller (30-40 people?) discussions every week. I had a really good TA, and we would do activities in discussion that reinforced what happened in class and in a lot of cases built on what was going on in lecture. Discussion was mandatory in this case.
Calc 1: Pretty much a standard calculus class. I took it with Strohmer. 300ish person lecture, plus ~40 person discussion with a quiz every week.

Spring quarter: 17 units
German 3: Again, same instructor. The class was down to 11 of us.
ECS 40: Taught by a postdoc. I stopped going to lecture after a couple weeks because he would pretty much read off the slides for around 40 minutes of an 80 minute class, then let the class out early. The TAs were all international students, so there were some communication issues there. I still went to discussion, but hardly anybody did so I can’t give a true estimate of actual class size.
Religion Today: Medium sized, 100 people approximately. The professor taught through going over concepts and then asking for input from the class, so it felt very personal. We had mandatory discussion each week, 25 people each discussion, where we did activities to go over the material.
Calc 2: Again, standard calc class. I took it with Kapovich – I don’t recommend him, at least for the 21 series. ~250 people in the class, 40 or so people per discussion.

Overall, I had quite a few big classes, a couple medium sized classes, and a couple smaller classes. I’d only call two of my instructors “bad” or just generally mediocre in that time. Actually now that I think about it, other than them I can’t think of any serious complaints about other instructors in general.

3

Thanks, that’s very helpful. I’m assuming your classes got smaller for sophomore and junior years?

4

For my dd, there was tutoring in every dorm building which she took advantage of and which helped her master the classes. Her classes were large 200-500 in lecture halls (math, bio). She will be a senior next year. She loves the school, the environment of the town, the access to SF and Sacramento if she wants to travel there.

5

Most GE and pre-req classes are fairly large. The largest class my son has had so far was an Anthro class at 350. He had a Freshman Seminar class with 15 students, English Lit class with 25 and Classics with 45. All large classes include a discussion with around 25 students each. Labs are also divided into small groups of 25. If you take advantage of the TA and Prof office hours, it can be a life saver if your having problems in class. Also many students will get together in study groups prior to exams and many Prof’s offer review sessions. My 2nd year son is very happy with the school.

6

My linguistics classes definitely got smaller compared to ling 1. I think the smallest lecture has been around 40 students? Mind you, for certain classes there are a lot of people that don’t show up and it makes the class seem smaller than it is if you just look at how full the room is. It’s really nice because the instructor at a minimum recognizes the people that go to class in that case, though it really throws you off when you walk in on an exam day and suddenly the room is nearly standing room only. I’ve especially noticed this in my CS classes, for whatever reason.

My computer science classes are still pretty big because of the sheer number of majors, but none as big as ECS 30. My current class (computer architecture) has around 160 students. Last quarter I had theory of computation with around 120 students and programming languages with around 150 students (I think, a lot didn’t go to class). Granted, I’m still taking the upper div core requirements. My understanding is that the elective classes tend to be smaller (defined as around 60-80), but I’ll find out for sure next year.

And yes, office hours are a lifesaver! I remember being terrified of looking stupid by going to office hours my first quarter. During my second quarter I was hopelessly lost on something in ECS 30 and finally went to office hours, completely dreading it…and discovered that it was mostly the students towards the top of the class that were going, and that the professor was perfectly happy to explain it until it clicked. Now I make it a point to stop by if I have any sort of confusion. Better to clear up smaller confusions early before they become bigger and harder to clear up.

7

thanks, everyone.