Class size- large universities

[teachermom2834]

I have always steered my dc toward smaller schools and avoiding huge lectures was one of the reasons. (I know some students do fine as one in 500 but I just never thought my would thrive in that setting). I had that undergraduate experience and I really don't think it was best for me. In spite of my nudging towards small schools my second ds is set to attend a university with over 30,000 undergraduates. 

He has his first semester schedule and not only did he get all the classes he needs but the largest one is 75 students. He has another one with 65, two with 19, (and one class for some reason I can't see the number of seats). Actualy those are the max enrollments. They are only about half full at this point. 

The key here has been his honors status. His class with 75 has a non-honors section with 450. The class with 65 has a non-honors section with 550. The classes offered through the honors college are capped at 19 students and meet around a conference table. 

So- I was wrong!! At least for his first semester he will not have large lectures with hundreds of students. I am so glad to be wrong. This school has treated him with more individual attention than any other school we have dealt with for either kid. And it is the largest by far. In fact, he already has a job lined up on campus. So much for just being a number. 

I am so glad I was wrong and excited for him. I am so much more comfortable with his choice than I was when he made it. 

[8filltheheart]

My kids have all attended publics and 2 of them large publics. They have also been part of honors colleges and have never had large classes.  Last yr as a freshman, my dd's largest class had 45 students. By the time ds was a Jr, his classes were very small. Iirc, he often had classes that had only 5-6 students on a campus with 30,000+ enrollment.

[Kassia]

My three sons attended one of the largest public universities in the country.  They had a few huge classes but most were not.  And the bigger classes were for lectures and usually had smaller recitation classes to attend.  But getting into classes they wanted/needed was an issue and honors priority scheduling was helpful for that.

[mom2att]

I think a lot of depends on your major, too, and whether or not you need to get your gen ed requirement classes taken care of. My dd just graduated from our state U of 50,000 students. She was not in the honors college, but she knew from the start that she was majoring in Linguistics, plus she had most of her GE classes already done through DE. She was able to start taking classes in her major right away, and did not have any classes with 100s of students. Most were 20 or less.

[teachermom2834]

2 hours ago, mom2att said:

I think a lot of depends on your major, too, and whether or not you need to get your gen ed requirement classes taken care of. My dd just graduated from our state U of 50,000 students. She was not in the honors college, but she knew from the start that she was majoring in Linguistics, plus she had most of her GE classes already done through DE. She was able to start taking classes in her major right away, and did not have any classes with 100s of students. Most were 20 or less.

My ds is a business major. Apparently he is in some cohort of “high achieving” first year business students that has access to smaller sections of the massive intro classes (principles of accounting, microeconomics this semester). This is independent of the honors college and he didn’t even know he was in this until he attended orientation. It allowed him him to switch from a microeconomics section of 550 and a prof with a large number of consistently scathing reviews on rate my professor to a section of 65 with a prof that gets glowing reviews. 

Just very happy for my kid. He was a late bloomer academically and certainly never thought even two years ago he would have these opportunities. 

 

[CAJinBE]

That is great news! I felt much the same after having survived engineering classes at a 30,000+ state flagship. It really was a matter of surviving the first two years of massive lecture halls, labs with 100 students, and TAs who barely spoke English. I didn't want that for my girls. I wish honors classes were an option for me, but I think everyone was a top student in their high school class, and there wasn't such a thing in the engineering college anyway. My dd is going to an honors college type thing at a European university. 

[MerryAtHope]

I went to a large university (about 28,000 at the time), and really didn't have that many classes that were the huge lecture style--just some of the most popular gen-ed classes. Many were the same as a typical highschool (20-30 range) and within my major (English) most were smaller classes of 10-20. 

[GoodGrief]

Going in with some dual enrollment can be helpful too. My oldest avoided the large freshman math and science classes because she had sufficient dual enrollment credits.

[Corraleno]

I think whether kids at the big state schools end up in these huge lectures depends a lot on major. Intro level STEM classes (especially ones that are weed-out/pre-reqs for a lot of different majors) can be quite large, but I don't think huge class sizes are that common for humanities and social science majors, even at the intro/GE level. (UCs might be an exception — Intro Anthro classes were routinely 400+ at UCLA when I was a TA back in the 80s.) I just checked some common freshman GE courses at DS's school (45K undergrads): Intro Anthro is capped at 100, Cultural Anthro at 50, and Intro Psych at 50-70. On the other hand, Calc 1 and Gen Chem 1 have lectures with caps ranging from 150-300.

DS's largest class for this fall is a mandatory class for freshmen humanities majors, which has ~40 kids currently registered and is capped at 50. His other classes are a 200-level linguistics class with 20 students (Honors), a regular 200-level linguistics class with 35, and a 300-level linguistics class with 25. (He also has English Comp, but that's online due to scheduling issues.) Looking at class size for rest of the courses in his major, none are larger than 40, most seem to be capped at 35, and the 300/400 level courses generally only have 15-20. That's not much different than class sizes at the small LAC I attended back in the Dark Ages.

[Frances]

12 hours ago, Corraleno said:

I think whether kids at the big state schools end up in these huge lectures depends a lot on major. Intro level STEM classes (especially ones that are weed-out/pre-reqs for a lot of different majors) can be quite large, but I don't think huge class sizes are that common for humanities and social science majors, even at the intro/GE level. (UCs might be an exception — Intro Anthro classes were routinely 400+ at UCLA when I was a TA back in the 80s.) I just checked some common freshman GE courses at DS's school (45K undergrads): Intro Anthro is capped at 100, Cultural Anthro at 50, and Intro Psych at 50-70. On the other hand, Calc 1 and Gen Chem 1 have lectures with caps ranging from 150-300.

DS's largest class for this fall is a mandatory class for freshmen humanities majors, which has ~40 kids currently registered and is capped at 50. His other classes are a 200-level linguistics class with 20 students (Honors), a regular 200-level linguistics class with 35, and a 300-level linguistics class with 25. (He also has English Comp, but that's online due to scheduling issues.) Looking at class size for rest of the courses in his major, none are larger than 40, most seem to be capped at 35, and the 300/400 level courses generally only have 15-20. That's not much different than class sizes at the small LAC I attended back in the Dark Ages.

And even for STEM majors, some universities have much smaller honors levels versions of the the intro courses. My son’s honors college was very humanities based and was where students took their gen ed requirements (nothing done in high school or at another college was allowed to substitute for these), but all of the math and science departments also had honors level versions of the intro courses. They were much smaller and much more rigorous. My son’s university also capped almost all math classes at 35, the only exceptions were stats and Calc for business and biology.

My son’s university also used a number of teaching profs for their large intro science classes, so most were very well taught. He was involved for several years with a program that brought together STEM profs, grad TAs, and undergrads who were interested in excellence in teaching and pedagogical methods, and was very impressed with the profs dedication to teaching and really enjoyed his experiences helping with the large intro classes. 

[DawnM]

My middle son is going to a college of about 10k undergrad students.  Their website says:

Approximately 57 percent of all classes have fewer than 30 students, and the student/faculty ratio is 16 to 1.

But I have no idea yet how true that is.  I guess we will find out!

Oldest is at a private school where almost all of his classes are 20 and under.

[SanDiegoMom]

I went to a large university but had a small Intro to Philosophy class. It was awful - I didn't understand most of it and it was at 8 am and I always fell asleep, but he always knew since there were only 15 students! My only B- in undergrad:) 

[Bootsie]

I taught at a 30,000 student university.  The introductory finance classes were capped at 30 students--but that number was quite misleading because there were 10 sections of 30 students in the same classroom at the same time.  A colleague taught the honors section which was capped at 40 in the classroom, but he also taught two other 300 student classes during the same semester, so the total number of students he was teaching was still very high.

[teachermom2834]

15 minutes ago, jdahlquist said:

I taught at a 30,000 student university.  The introductory finance classes were capped at 30 students--but that number was quite misleading because there were 10 sections of 30 students in the same classroom at the same time.  A colleague taught the honors section which was capped at 40 in the classroom, but he also taught two other 300 student classes during the same semester, so the total number of students he was teaching was still very high.

I did notice this. I was looking at different sections of one course and realized they were at the same time/place with same teacher. Each was capped at 38 students but there was more than ten sections. Very misleading. 

[Kassia]

On 7/14/2018 at 2:12 PM, SanDiegoMom in VA said:

I went to a large university but had a small Intro to Philosophy class. It was awful - I didn't understand most of it and it was at 8 am and I always fell asleep, but he always knew since there were only 15 students! My only B- in undergrad:) 

 

Totally off-topic, but DH and I met in our fairly small Intro to Philosophy class.  My ds1 and his long-time girlfriend met in a huge business class.

[Dmmetler]

DD just visited York (55,000 students) and U of Toronto (88,000 students),and both tours stressed that there were large classes in some areas (300+ students) , but that it was very dependent on major (and that all large classes would have recitation sections that were much smaller to provide support. The guide at UT stressed that the recitation sections were really important-apparently a lot of students don’t bother to do them. The guide at York suggested sitting in the front two rows, because he spent a good part of his first semester watching baseball and hockey on his phone in the back row, and then found it hard to keep up in the classes. Both stated that it could be a rough transition from a small secondary school. 

 

DD thinks that’s fine.  She points out that the same things happen in her CC classes, which are capped at 25-lots of people show up only occasionally, or zone out when there-but that the rest of the group has a good class because the professors don’t go back and repeat for those who are absent physically or mentally. 

 

The largest class I ever had as an undergrad was a 4000 level psychoneurophysiology class where the professor was teaching on three campuses simultaneously-one physically, two via closed circuit TV at satellite campuses. It was weird-there were maybe 30 people in the room locally, but more like 100 answering questions and participating in discussion.  (It was required for nursing majors as well as psych majors) 

[G5052]

My oldest is at the largest 4-year in our state, and thankfully transferred in as a junior. The freshman classes in his major typically have 300+, but they cap his at 60 and his capstone class will have no more than 30. He's glad he started at the CC.