Questions about College.

Post Reply New Topic

Oh great another me whining about not being in College but no instead I have questions about when/if I go back LOL!

1) How big is the classroom for you (as in How many students)

2)What's your major (I know some majors are more popular than others

3) Is it a basic classroom with desks or is it the "Auditorium" stuff we see on tv? (I don't think I'd like the auditorium setup.)

Obviously with the interest of Psychology I know it'd be a big classroom but how it might be setup or possibly how many students I'm not sure. Thanks WP and other College students!! !

Since I'm a first-semester university student that transferred from a community college, I haven't yet gotten into the really specialized courses that only have 25 or so students in them. My classes right now tend to run at about 60-70 people, except for my ecology class, which has 240 and is in an auditorium. The 240 of us all get the lecture portion at once, but then we have ten labs, all at different times, that meet once a week and have 24 students each in them.

Oddly enough, the 240-person class is the only one where I don't feel the need to invoke my accommodation of having a separate, low-distraction environment for exam-taking! You can hear a pin drop in there during tests; everyone is quietly concentrating.

I had gotten very spoiled at the community college. Class size averaged 25, 40 was considered huge, and many of my classes only had between 6 and 12 students in them.

The secret to my tolerating the larger classes I have now? Accommodations that say I MUST sit in the front row. That means I can concentrate on the instructor, I can hear what he/she is saying without having to worry about auditory figure ground issues, and I can pretend that that huge crowd of people behind me doesn't exist, because I can't see them.

I have a double major of Environmental Science and Animal Ecology (Aquatic Sciences option). As I get into more technical courses regarding aquatic ecosystems, the size of my classes will decrease appreciably.

Hope this helps.

Wow 240 students!! !! I wonder if I could get a pass to sit in the front row?! !! !! I'm not sure if I could do as you did go from Community to University OMG! Hopefully I could get some help with that because all those students would be overwhelming. Thanks.

Well, it's been an extremely rough ride, and I still waver between sticking it out or calling it quits, but I am definitely going to give it one more semester. It IS really overwhelming.

Visit the campus a lot in the months before you go, and get your support system in place ahead of time. When I had three meltdowns the first week, I knew exactly where to go and who to see, and they already knew who and what I was. There is no way I'd have made it as far as I have without them.

And don't be shy about asking for a front row seat. That's a super-easy accommodation for any instructor to make. At the start of class, always go straight to your seat and never look at all the people in the room. Once in class, if someone behind you has a question for the instructor, don't turn around and look behind you because it's a good way to freak out.

Good luck!

The school I am going to (and have previously attained a Psychology degree from) had classes in that department ranging from 20-70 students. Intro to Psych, Abnormal Psych, and Serial Killers were the big classes. All the others were small. But the classroom was set up in a way that it did not seem crowded for the large classes-- there was plenty of room. The large classroom was what you see on TV and in movies (but not enormous). There are only two rooms that large on the entire campus, and you won't spend much time in them. As for non-Psychology classes, introductory science classes also tended to be large (maybe 50 students-- it's been a while, so it might be different now), but not crowded. All other classes had anywhere from 5 to 45 people, averaging around 30. The Psychology department at my school was great. I would avoid the Communication Disorders department, though. It's called Truman State University. Even out-of-state, the tuition is low, the academics are excellent and 99% of the faculty and student body are amazing. I would suggest it as a place to look, if you want a Psychology degree. Actually, I would suggest it for anything other than Comm Dis!

If you're going to a state university, any intro class you take is going to have anywhere between 100-500 people in it (depending on what major). I'm an Econ major, and my intro classes had around 150 people in them. However, I also took an intro Sociology class for a gen ed, and that had almost 500 people in it. All those classes I mentioned were in auditoriums. When you get to the higher level classes, however, they'll normally be less than 50 people and always inside of a normal classroom.

I always sit in the front row. It's easier to hear and concentrate on what the teacher is saying. And I don't notice how many people are there behind me. I have accommodations as well. It really helps.

1) How big is the classroom for you (as in How many students)
class size decreases with year level. when I was in undergrad, classes ranged from two, three hundred to 50.
in grad school, my classes range from 10 to 20 people.

2)What's your major (I know some majors are more popular than others
Electrochemical engineering

3) Is it a basic classroom with desks or is it the "Auditorium" stuff we see on tv? (I don't think I'd like the auditorium setup.)
when it was a really big class, we had a theater with mutiple screens. and if you sit in the very back, the professor looks smaller than a pen. but for small classes (less than 30), we had desks, and a projector.

1) My smallest class had 10 people largest 60

2) History

3) mostly basic classrooms but one was an auditorium.

Depends on the class, I've gone from 10 in a history class to 200 in genetics. In lecture courses, there really is relatively little difference how many students are in the class.


Math and biology. Math classes are almost always under 20 or 30, bio classes are usually quite large until you reach the upper-level stuff.


Mix and match. The bio classes have "auditoriums" in a sense, but you definitely still have a desk in front of you. It's just to accommodate a larger class.


Psych actually should have fairly small classes, except for the very first intro course, which to be honest will be too easy for it to even matter what the setup is.

Okay so this is for any who have "double" majored. Generally do colleges allow this to be done or do they discourage it? I ask because I am looking at doing a contemporary jazz certificate and bridging into a contempo music degree porgram but at the same time also doing a three year journalism diploma. I'm doing the journalism as my cousin who is a vocal technician has suggested I look into journalism and becoming like a music critic or reviewer so I'll have a steady income coming in whilw I'm getting my music career going. Now accomodation isn't an issue and at the school I'm attending, which offers both, I can get every accommodation I need which is priority seating, note-taker/electronic copies of noted from my profs, electronic and adaptive software versions of test/exams, and a quiet place to do my tests/exams and the biggest classes I've had, when I was there for two other diplomas, are about thirty.

With regards to my age issue I've checked and with a special needs bylaw that, I think it's ontario's government, has passed which permits me to take up to two times it's preset time frame, to complete aprogram, so putting that into consideration, if I do all the programs together, of course on reduced course load, depending on whether I reaudition for the music degree or, if I am eligible to, do the bridging semseter and start the contempo music degree in its third year(ie, 5th semester), I would be looking at finishing school completely either the may after my 34th birthday or the may after my 32nd, basically meaning either way I'd only just be starting to try to get an "industry" career off the ground when I'm already in/around my mid thirties.

Is any of this advisable or allowed/encourage by colleges?

I go to a fairly sizeable state university as an undergrad.

1) 75% of the time 15-30 students in a regular high-school sized classroom. 25% of the time it's a lecture hall class and it's more like 60-100.

2) Biology, with a concentration in Ecology, Biodiversity and Evolution. My minor is Psych (which was my original major).

3) Lecture halls occur more commonly in movies than at college, from my experience anyway. They're a minority of the classes you take. I usually just have 1 out of 4 or 5 classes a semester.

Your intro course will probably be a lecture hall, after that not so much.