Reply to How big are intro class sizes at UVA vs W&M?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]When we went to the admitted students day at UVA 2 professors spoke who had classes with 500 plus people (one was a data science class and another was in the history dept I think). One of these classes had a waitlist of over 800 people. I'm not sure this is something to brag about. Parents are paying thousands of dollars for their kids to take this class and likely never get to interact with the superstar professor in a meaningful way. If the professor is a great lecturer, why not have them do a ted talk.[/quote]

Well I HIGHLY doubt that is true. UVA limits waitlists to 199 for one thing. If you’re curious, you can go to louslist.org where you can see the class sizes for every class being offered along with the waitlists. [/quote]

I agree -this is false. There aren’t that many students at UVA. It’s a small flagship of only 16,000 so only 4,000 in entering class ergo it would be impossible to have 1/8 of an entering class of several 100 majors all in one class. My DD started UVA as an engineer. Her largest class was biology intro at 75 and calculus at 100. She switched at end of first year to Econ and politics and had very small seminars of 12 from that point on. She wound up a history major, as had been DW and myself, so we could compare, and received a far better and intimate e patience with those professors (who wrote fantastic letters if rev for her) than we did in our respective history majors in very expensive SLACs.[/quote]

I know a calculus class of 100 is probably pretty good for a state flagship, but, my God, this is something to brag about? What are our standards for education here, where a 100-person calculus class would remotely be seen as acceptable? What would us parents say if our kids’ AP calculus class in high school had 100 students?

UVA is a great in-state option if you live in Virginia. I get it. It’s cheap. If you are not a Virginia resident, a 54k oos tuition for that? Davidson’s tuition is 57k. I would say that 3k extra would be money well spent.[/quote]

1) no one is bragging.  Just correcting someone's false claims that UVA has entry-level classes of 500.  UVA doesn't even have a classroom that large
2) calculus, as you should know, is an entry-level course for almost all hard science and tech majors.  Ergo all those first-year students have to take it unless they tested out. But testing out is difficult. https://math.virginia.edu/content/math-placement/.
3) There are breakout sessions, labs and tutors to assist
4) it was well taught.  Kid got an A.  Much better taught than the calculus she had had at her private school (AB/BC, yes, had to retake, most Universities require it because they want to make sure all students start on equal footing in calculus).
5) Instate tuition for us was $6K a term.  DD moved off campus ASAP to inexpensive group house and did her own cooking.  No car.  And we carried her on our own insurance plan so didn't have to pay UVA's health care plan. Total was probably $15K a year, because DD was frugal and smart.   Davidson (weird pick) is more than $74,000 a year, not including airfaire and travel.   Which meant we could pocket away the $60K difference, let it compound  and now . . . .
6) pay for her grad work at Oxford, where she is beginning her second year in Oct.   (UVA is the top producer of all publics of Rhodes Scholars and no 8 in the US after the private Ivies).[/quote]

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