Sunday, October 7, 2012

Jersey Jazzman: Small Classes: Great For Ivies, Not For Children?

Jersey Jazzman: Small Classes: Great For Ivies, Not For Children?:


Small Classes: Great For Ivies, Not For Children?

The eldest Jazzboy is a high school senior, and he's pretty bright. Which means we've been looking at colleges - a lot of colleges. And you know what?

The most elite colleges all brag on low student-to-teacher ratios and small class sizes. Take the Ivies:

Harvard:
The faculty is highly accessible, and Harvard College class sizes are on average below 40, with over half the courses being offered each semester enrolling 10 or fewer students. This allows for a closer student-professor relationship and contributes to the sense of community on campus.
Yale:
“Average” can be a very misleading term. Classes at Yale range from one-on-one tutorials to small seminars to lecture courses of several hundred students. Seventy-five percent of Yale College courses enroll fewer than twenty students; twenty-nine percent enroll fewer than ten. Only about forty out of all 2,000 courses enroll more than 100 students.
Princeton:
The student to faculty ratio at Princeton is 6:1. From freshman seminars to senior theses, faculty