Why attend public univ as out-of-state student?

College Search & Selection
41

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<p>This is comparing tippy-top publics with the one T20 university that most resembles a public university (and is in fact a hybrid of public-private). Below is a broader (though slightly outdated) comparison of public v. private class sizes at top ~50 universities.</p>

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Index   ,   Class Size Score    ,   National University ,   USN Teaching Excellence ,   < 20 (3 points) ,   20 - 50 (2 points)  ,   > 50 (1 point)</p>

<p>100%    ,   2.68    ,   Harvard ,   YES ,   75% ,   17% ,   9%
100%    ,   2.68    ,   Columbia    ,   no  ,   76% ,   16% ,   8%
100%    ,   2.68    ,   U Chicago   ,   YES ,   72% ,   24% ,   4%
100%    ,   2.68    ,   Tufts   ,   YES ,   74% ,   21% ,   4%
100%    ,   2.67    ,   Yale    ,   YES ,   75% ,   17% ,   8%
100%    ,   2.67    ,   U Penn  ,   no  ,   74% ,   19% ,   7%
99% ,   2.66    ,   Northwestern    ,   YES ,   75% ,   17% ,   7%
99% ,   2.65    ,   Stanford    ,   YES ,   74% ,   16% ,   11%
99% ,   2.65    ,   Duke    ,   YES ,   70% ,   25% ,   5%
98% ,   2.63    ,   Princeton   ,   YES ,   73% ,   17% ,   10%
97% ,   2.61    ,   Caltech ,   YES ,   69% ,   23% ,   8%
97% ,   2.61    ,   Wash U  ,   YES ,   72% ,   18% ,   9%
97% ,   2.61    ,   Rice    ,   YES ,   68% ,   25% ,   7%
97% ,   2.61    ,   Vanderbilt  ,   YES ,   67% ,   27% ,   6%
97% ,   2.6 ,   Emory   ,   YES ,   68% ,   25% ,   6%
97% ,   2.59    ,   Brown   ,   YES ,   70% ,   20% ,   9%
96% ,   2.58    ,   Brandeis    ,   no  ,   66% ,   27% ,   6%
96% ,   2.56    ,   Carnegie Mellon ,   no  ,   65% ,   26% ,   9%
95% ,   2.55    ,   Dartmouth   ,   YES ,   64% ,   27% ,   9%
95% ,   2.55    ,   Wake Forest ,   YES ,   57% ,   41% ,   2%
95% ,   2.54    ,   Johns Hopkins   ,   no  ,   65% ,   24% ,   11%
95% ,   2.54    ,   Tulane  ,   no  ,   62% ,   30% ,   8%
94% ,   2.52    ,   USC ,   no  ,   64% ,   24% ,   12%
94% ,   2.52    ,   Case Western    ,   no  ,   62% ,   28% ,   10%
93% ,   2.5 ,   MIT ,   no  ,   64% ,   23% ,   12%
93% ,   2.5 ,   U Rochester ,   no  ,   62% ,   26% ,   12%
93% ,   2.49    ,   Georgetown  ,   YES ,   58% ,   34% ,   7%
**93%  ,   2.48    ,   UC Berkeley ,   no  ,   62% ,   24% ,   14%  <--- TOP PUBLIC** 
92% ,   2.46    ,   Notre Dame  ,   YES ,   56% ,   34% ,   10%
92% ,   2.46    ,   NYU ,   no  ,   58% ,   30% ,   12%
91% ,   2.44    ,   W&M ,   YES ,   49% ,   45% ,   7%
91% ,   2.43    ,   Cornell ,   no  ,   60% ,   23% ,   17%
91% ,   2.43    ,   Rensselaer  ,   no  ,   53% ,   37% ,   10%
90% ,   2.41    ,   Boston Coll ,   YES ,   48% ,   45% ,   7%
88% ,   2.37    ,   Lehigh  ,   no  ,   47% ,   43% ,   10% <--- BOTTOM PRIVATE
88% ,   2.35    ,   U Virginia  ,   YES ,   49% ,   37% ,   14%
87% ,   2.33    ,   UC Santa Barbara    ,   no  ,   50% ,   33% ,   17%
87% ,   2.32    ,   U North Carolina    ,   YES ,   44% ,   44% ,   12%
86% ,   2.31    ,   UCLA    ,   no  ,   53% ,   26% ,   20%
86% ,   2.31    ,   UC Irvine   ,   no  ,   49% ,   34% ,   16%
85% ,   2.28    ,   U Wisconsin ,   no  ,   44% ,   39% ,   18%
84% ,   2.26    ,   U Michigan  ,   no  ,   44% ,   38% ,   18%
82% ,   2.21    ,   U Florida   ,   no  ,   41% ,   39% ,   20%
82% ,   2.2 ,   U Washington    ,   no  ,   35% ,   49% ,   17%
82% ,   2.19    ,   U Illinois  ,   no  ,   38% ,   43% ,   19%
81% ,   2.18    ,   Georgia Tech    ,   no  ,   40% ,   38% ,   22%
81% ,   2.16    ,   Penn State  ,   no  ,   33% ,   50% ,   17%
80% ,   2.14    ,   UCSD    ,   no  ,   44% ,   26% ,   30%
79% ,   2.12    ,   U Texas ,   no  ,   35% ,   42% ,   23%
78% ,   2.09    ,   UC Davis    ,   no  ,   35% ,   38% ,   28%

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<p>Source: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/708190-avg-class-size-4.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/708190-avg-class-size-4.html&lt;/a&gt;, post #50, dated 05-08-2009.</p>

<p>I think these figures even understate the public v. private differences for typical undergraduates. Large state universities, especially the leading flagships, offer (to their great credit) a very large number of upper-division (undergraduate-graduate) classes in diverse fields. These have far lower enrollments than required introductory classes or classes in the most popular majors. Therefore, they will tend to deflate the overall class size numbers. Honors programs presumably do lower the average class sizes for some 1st and 2nd year students.</p>

<p>These numbers do not capture other important differences such as the number of writing assignments, the use of essay v. multiple choice exam formats, the amount of classroom discussion, or the use of original/primary source teaching materials v. commercial textbooks. Class size numbers are rough proxies for these distinctions. My S2 visited one public honors college where the classes were indeed fairly small (~25), but the prevailing instructional style still seemed to be a lecture format where the professor occasionally tossed out softball questions to the students. YMMV, I suppose.</p>

42

<p>tk21769:</p>

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<p>I’m sure the prof has to strike a balance between course material covered during the term v helping the students engage in and develop whatever skills wrt spontaneous repartee and banter.</p>

<p>Most philosophy depts are pretty small at most u’s, and in depts like these, it’s necessary to engage in Socratic methods…and one could add English, rhetoric, etc. </p>

<p>But in the sciences, especially early on, it’s just a regurg of materials put forth in lecture and in books, whether the profs own or through standard textbooks. </p>

<p>And there’s definitely a min-standard marker on the materials in these classes to build on whatever foundation the student needs to develop for later forays into his/her major.</p>

43

<p>Because liek the public schools in your state are bad so you want to go to Michigan, Virginia, UCLA, or Cal.</p>

<p>I honestly don’t understand why this question is being asked…are you not allowed to like a state school that isn’t located in your state or something?</p>

44

<p>The OP used a California resident example; California residents may have less reason to look at out of state publics due to the large number of in state publics of all levels of selectivity and broad coverage of subjects that one can study.</p>

<p>However, not everyone lives in California, or another state with a good range of choice of in state publics.</p>

45

<p>Due to budget and overcrowding issues in Cali colleges the Pac Northwest (UW, UO, etc) are getting a huge influx of students from there. Also Udub opened spots up to more OOS students. Some of the better midwest publics like UM, UW and UMinn are also seeing a jump in students from Cali for the same reasons.</p>

46

<p>I’m from california and I will be attending University of Delaware this fall. My scholarship makes it cheaper to go to UD oos than a UC instate. Also, tuition prices keep going up and up with the economy in california. The budget problems are horrible!</p>

47

<p>@tk21769 (post #41),</p>

<p>I don’t really understand the “index” that our old friend hawkette—a notorious anti-public poster on CC—constructed. Pretty non-transparent. But beyond the fact that it’s based on outdated data, it appears to weigh the number of classes < 20 more heavily than the number of classes > 50. But this is obvious rubbish. As is easily demonstrated, even at a college with 8-10% classes >50 (i.e., most elite private universities), students could on average easily be spending more time in large classes than in small classes. That’s true for the simple, logically straightforward reason that there are more students IN each class >50. So, for example, if the average class size for classes < 20 is 12, and the average class size for classes over 50 is 85, then at a school with 70% of its classes < 20 students and 10% of its classes > 50 students, students on average will be spending roughly equal amounts of time in small (<20) and large (>50) classes. That’s because it takes on average 7 times as many small classes to fill as much time in students’ schedules as a single class >50. </p>

<p>If you really want small classes, don’t go to a university, public or private; go to a LAC, where typically only 1 or 2% of the classes are >50—or less than that at some LACs. At a school like Harvard or Princeton where 8-10% of the classes are >50, you’ll spend roughly as much time in large classes as in small classes. If not more. Basically, then, with few exceptions, “university” = large classes, and “LAC” = small classes.</p>

48

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They could be, if those large classes were concentrated in required introductory classes or in popular majors. This is a limitation of the Common Data Set class-size distribution tables (section I3). The tables (I assume) tell us the distribution of classes at various enrollment sizes across the course catalog (regardless of actual registration patterns).</p>

<p>bc, you seem to be looking at aggregate hours that the registar has to fill for the entire population. For every 100 students, the registrar needs to fill approximately 3 hours X 12 weeks X 5 classes X 2 semesters X 100 students = 36,000 student-hours/year. One 100-student lecture will account for 3600 student-hours (3X12X100); nine 10-student seminars will only account for 3240 student-hours (3X12X10X9). So … more aggregate student-hours are spent in large lectures than small seminars, even though only 1 in 10 classes is a large (100-student) lecture.</p>

<p>Is this the right way to look at class size? I don’t think so, not from the individual student’s perspective. For registrations mapped to this distribution of courses, the individual student is still spending most of the time in small seminars. Then again, the CDS does not seem to tell us the true registration patterns (small-enrollment courses could be piled up in elective 500-level tutorials; big lectures could be front-loaded into required 1st year courses).</p>

49

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I attended another T10 private university, where that was not my experience. Even in the first two years, seminars outnumbered lectures by roughly that 10:1 ratio. Most seminars in the first two years enrolled fewer than 20; most in the last 2 years enrolled 10-15 at most. (Caveat: that was years ago; enrollments at my alma mater have grown dramatically.)</p>

<p>I take your point about LACs. However, one of the things that makes most of the T20 private universities very attractive, in my opinion, is that their undergraduate programs are so like LACs. Same small classes (to a great extent). Same liberal arts & science curriculum. They are true residential colleges with few or no commuters. But … you also get the resources of a research university (huge library systems; here and there a famous/influential professor who actually teaches undergraduates; etc.) </p>

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I ignore that first column. The second is just a weighted average, like a GPA on a 3-pt scale. The important contribution is the data gathered in the last 3 columns. The story it tells is one that accords with my own personal experience combined with anecdotal evidence from others (that average class sizes at very selective private universities tend to be much smaller than average class sizes at state flagships… though I don’t have a very good sense of the typical class-size experience at the very best flagships or at public honors colleges.)</p>

50

<p>I grew up in Nevada. There, your options are limited to two very mediocre state schools. Everyone in my high school graduating class who could go out of state, did go out of state. The mix was about even between private and public options for those of us who left.</p>

51

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<p>This, the bold, would be where bclintonk’s argument comes in, that there has to be much more seminars to enroll the same amt of students as one large lecture, though not causing the individual student to enroll in equal amounts of large and small classes per his argument, ie, school as a whole wrt class mix (seminars/lectures) v the student and his/her class mix per term. </p>

<p>If average lecture were 100, and average seminar were 10 at your alma mater, then the average student could/would be enrolled in a seminar/lecture ~ 1:1 as far as class mix, or 2.5 seminars per term, if I understood some of your math as being for a typical five-class- load-semester college. That’s A LOT for a research U.</p>

<p>Since you highlighted ‘seminars,’ does that mean that students were engaged in independent research ~ 50% of the time? I doubt if even CIT would have anywhere near that kind of mix for undergrads.</p>

<p>I’m just wondering where you went to school and how long ago this was. And we know that CIT hasn’t grown much over a period of time, certainly not ‘grown dramatically,’ so rule out this U.</p>

<p>I agree with bclintonk, generally, that the info that hawkette complied is useless, or however he put it. The demarcations between the three intervals probably isn’t that material, and the indices he put forthe for each u don’t differ that greatly wrt these three. If you want to argue that X university has a 2.4 v another that has a 2.2, then go for it, have some fun. </p>

<p>Now if you really wanted to find out the class sizes for each u, then all you have to do is ask them and they’d provide.</p>

52

<p>My friend got over $35,000 from Claremount-McKenna in scholarships which made it much cheaper to attend than UIUC, the instate school.</p>

53

<p>Just to complete my thoughts, including ackowledging my mess-ups wrt wording in my 1st and 5th P’s:</p>

<p>I don’t know why hawkette just didn’t pick midpoints for the first two intervals and an arbitrary, say, 100 for the catch-all third.</p>

<p>So according to the info provided:</p>

<p>Harvard, 22 students/class, Davis, listed last, 45. Why the heck would she want to index according to 3, 2, 1? A 2.5 means nothing to no one.</p>

54

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<p>No. By “seminars”, I’m simply referring to small discussion-based classes. I referred to “100-student” and “10-student” classes as hypotheticals in post #48 just to illustrate rough, order-of-magnitude spreads. We could include labs in the small class mix, too. Most of my own undergraduate classes were small discussion-based classes or labs (though I don’t know what the exact numbers were). I’m referring to the University of Chicago at a time when enrollment was about 600 students per graduating class as I recall. Undergraduate enrollment since then has roughly doubled, but the College still has one of the highest percentages of small classes (< 20 v. >50) based on data I see on the Internet. </p>

<p>I don’t want to get wrapped up in hawkette’s index, but I don’t think the data s/he provided was “useless” (though I’d agree it leaves room for questions). As far as I can tell, s/he just reported the class size data coming out of the Common Data Set from many schools (last 3 columns), aggregated it on that 3-pt scale to provide a sorting handle (column 2), and tossed in that gratuitous “index” in column 1. Now, I can imagine some far-fetched scenarios whereby, even with the reported distributions, a random student at Princeton, etc., on average will indeed be spending roughly equal amounts of time in small (<20) and large (>50) classes. In theory it could be the case that every “>50” class has 1000 students, a couple of them are required for every student every term, and the balance of courses in the catalog are rarely-offered classes that a random student is unlikely to ever take. </p>

<p>I just don’t believe such scenarios are very likely. I believe selective private universities generally do offer numerous small, discussion-focused seminars and labs to 1st and 2nd year students. But if anyone has better data tables than hawkette’s, I’d like to see them.</p>

55

<p>It’s an easy question scholarship but the number one reason is people want to leave the state and go to college elsewhere it doest have to be far away but just oos.</p>

56

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<p>I think you’re missing the basic mathematical point. It simply CAN’T be the case that, on average, individual students are spending more time in small classes/seminars, if the total aggregate of student-hours spent in large classes exceeds the total aggregate of student-hours spent in small seminars.</p>

<p>Let’s use your example and assume a university where there are only 2 kinds of classes, small seminars of 10 students, and lectures of 100 students. Let’s further assume for the sake of simplicity there are 1,000 students, and each semester each student takes 4 3-hour classes for a total of 12,000 student-hours per semester. Now let’s suppose the small seminars outnumber the 100-person lectures by 9-to-1, i.e., 10% of the classes are 100-person lectures, and 90% are 10-person seminars. Then for every 10 100-person classes there are 90 10-person seminars; and for every 3000 student-hours spent in those 10 100-person classes (10 classes X 100 students/class X 3 credit-hours/class) , there are 2700 student-hours spent in the 90 10-person seminars (90 seminars X 10 students/seminar X 3 credit-hours/class), for a combined total of 5700 student-hours (300 + 2700) per semester for each 10 100-person lectures and 90 10-person seminars. But at that rate it would take approximately 21.053 100-person lectures (= 6,315.8 student-hours) and 189.45 10-person seminars (5,684.3 student-hours) to fill up the requisite 12,000 student-hours.</p>

<p>But if each student took on average 2 seminars/semester, that would fill up 6,000 student-hours (1,000 students X 2 seminars X 3 credit-hours/class)—or more than the 5,684.3 student hours available in 10-person seminars. And if each student took on average 2 100-person lectures, that would total 6,000 student-hours (1,000 students X 2 seminars X 3 credit-hours/class)—or less than the 6,315.8 student-hours that the 10% of classes that are 100-person lectures need to fill to get our 12,000 student-hours. </p>

<p>Bottom line, students would need to take on average fewer than two 10-person seminars (on average, 1.89 such seminars) and more than two 100-person lectures (on average, 2.105 such classes) EACH SEMESTER in order for the numbers to balance out. And that’s in a school where small seminars outnumber large lectures 9-to-1, a ratio which few if any universities achieve.</p>

<p>So I repeat what I said: you’re kidding yourself if you think going to a major university will mean you spend more time in small seminars than in large lectures. By and large, that’s true only at LACs. Individual experience will vary, of course, but anecdotes to the contrary don’t defeat the basic mathematical point: even at schools like Harvard, Princeton, and Stanford, students spend, on average, more time in large classes than in small ones. With few exceptions, it’s only at LACs that students spend more time in small classes than in large ones.</p>

57

<p>bclintonk:</p>

<p>I think tk21769 is claiming that all upper-div courses at top-tiers like Chicago are ‘seminars,’ by his/her statement that: </p>

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<p>If this is the case, then absolutely, students would be enrolled in = or > ‘large’ classes as frosh/soph.</p>

<p>I’m still trying to decipher (not primary thought, more backgroundish) what the teaching load is within in these ‘seminars’ as frosh/sophs and whether some are associated with other classes, etc. Not a big deal with me, however, so no one feel compelled to answer.</p>

<p>tk21769:</p>

<p>I think that’s the question: What to use as a midpoint for the third interval, the catch all ‘> 50’ set. </p>

<p>If we used 100 as the midpoint, by symmetry, we could expand it out to 150 on the other side. That could be seemingly low; however, there are doubtlessly much more classes in the 51-85 student range, say, than there are in the really high end of 300+ because there are undoubtedly just a handful of large lecture halls on campus, even at large public u’s, so we could say the distribution looks like a rolling wave hitting shore right to left (with nice shape and form, etc)… and even though public schools undoubtedly have these lecture halls fired up at all weekly scheduled hours, or moreso.</p>

58

<p>Major selection can also make a huge difference in class sizes encountered.</p>

<p>For example, at Berkeley, a Molecular and Cell Biology major will be in large classes for most of his/her major courses, since that major is the largest on campus (~500 graduates per year). Even junior and senior level courses will be large; freshman and sophomore level courses are even larger, since they are shared with other large majors like Integrative Biology and pre-meds not majoring in biology.</p>

<p>But a Math major might go through Berkeley taking all but one major course in classes with less than 30 students (AP Calculus to advance past freshman calculus, honors sophomore math other than discrete math that may have ~100 students but no honors version, small junior, senior, and graduate level classes).</p>

59

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This has been my experience as well. By far my largest classes were orgo and ecology/evolution (each with 80 students). All of my other courses had fewer than 30 students, and the vast majority had 4-15 students. </p>

<p>I spent a fair amount of time over at a neighboring public taking courses there, and typically courses in my home department would be approximately twice as large over there (e.g. a Roman history course that enrolled 20 students at Duke had 45 at UNC). Class sizes at my current institution (a UC) are slightly larger than at UNC.</p>

<p>My boyfriend and sister both attend LACs, and their class sizes have been pretty comparable, from what I’ve seen. The difference is that they get considerably more handholding and faculty attention than most universities (including any I’ve attended) give their undergraduates.</p>

60

<p>William & Mary:</p>

<p>History of Harvard, Prestige of Georgetown, Education of Amherst, Price of Va Tech. There is no other school like it in America.</p>