Reply to Question of Parents of Kids at SLACs

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

Reply to "Question of Parents of Kids at SLACs"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Important to differentiate among top ranked selective LACs (SLACs), LACs, private National Universities, public universities, and honors colleges/honors programs at state public flagship universities.

Classes are typically quite small at public university honors colleges and at private National Universities and always--to the best of my knowledge and experience--taught by professors. Grad student TAs are used for small break-out study sessions of any large introductory courses. Grad student TAs often act as tutors. Close relationships with professors are available at honors colleges & honors programs and at private National Universities.

In order to differentiate further, specific schools and, possibly, even specific majors should be known.

When I read of large class sizes and lack of close relationships with professors, I usually think of the University of California system schools which have student teacher ratios of 18:1 and 20:1 and some other large public National Universities such as Illinois, Ohio State, Texas A&M, and the University of Florida, but not at private National Universities.

National Universities and LACs report the percentage of classes with under 20 students as well as the percentage of classes with 50 or more students and the results are published by US News Best Colleges. Student:Faculty ratio is also reported and published by US News Best Colleges for the Top 50 ranked National Universities and for the Top 50 ranked LACs.

The lowest (best) student:faculty ratios are reported by private National Universities. (36 of the Top 54 ranked National Universities are private Nat'L Universities)

MIT 3:1
CalTech 3:1

Princeton 4:1
Yale 4:1

Harvard 5:1
Stanford 5:1
Chicago 5:1

UPenn 6:1
Northwestern 6:1
Duke 6:1
Johns Hopkins 6:1
Brown 6:1
Rice 6:1
Carnegie Mellon Univ. 6:1
Columbia 6:1

Dartmouth College 7:1
WashUStL 7:1

Vanderbilt 8:1
Notre Dame 8:1
NYU 8:1
Tulane 8:1

Cornell 9:1
Emory 9:1
USC 9:1
Tufts 9:1
U Rochester 9:1
Lehigh 9:1

Boston University 10:1
Brandeis 10:1

Georgetown 11:1
Wake Forest 11:1
Boston College 11:1
Case Western Reserve 11:1
Villanova 11:1

Pepperdine 13:1

Northeastern 14:1

Among the top 53 Liberal Arts Colleges (LACs), 50 are private and 3 are Service Academies. The student:faculty ratios are (from lowest to highest):

Williams College 6:1
US Air Force Academy 6:1

Amherst, Swarthmore, Pomona, Wellesley, Smith, SOKA, & the US Military Academy are at 7:1

Bowdoin, US Naval Academy, Claremont McKenna, Carleton, Middlebury, Wash & Lee, Grinnell, Wesleyan, Vassar, URichmond, Harvey Mudd, Bryn Mawr, Whitman, Skidmore, Occidental,  & DePauw are at 8:1

Hamilton, Haverford, Barnard, Davidson, Colgate, Colorado College, Berea, Kenyon, Mount Holyoke, Scripps, Pitzer, Oberlin, Bucknell, Denison, Franklin & Marshall, Furman, Hillsdale, Trinity College, Connecticut College, Dickinson, & Union are at 9:1.

Colby, Bates, Macalester, Holy Cross, Lafayette, and Sewanee-Univ. of the South are at 10:1.

Thomas Aquinas is at 11:1.

Some Public National Universities:

College of William & Mary 12:1

University of Virginia 14:1
Univ. of Michigan 14:1

UNC 15:1

UCLA 18:1

UCal-Berkeley 19:1

You have to be careful when interpreting these numbers. Many national universities have a large number of faculty but, at the highest levels, many of them don't teach undergrads or, if they do, have very limited teaching responsibility. The main responsibility of the most esteemed faculty is research, writing books, giving lectures outside their school, etc. I have a kid at a top 20 National University, and I can tell you that the professors oversee teaching more so than actual teaching.

[/quote][/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics