Today I’m on the campus of Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. I’ve had a really interesting and fun-filled, active day here on the campus. And one of the things was a question-and-answer session with an admissions officer. One of the parents attending asked a question about, “What’s the faculty-to-student ratio?” And I was really pleased at the candor of the admissions officer to talk about the slipperiness of that statistic.

But here at Trinity, it’s a very clear nine to one. They are very honest about how they do the accounting. They look at only the full-time faculty that are offering classes here at the university. Then they look at the number of students and do the little math problem, division problem, and come up with nine to one. That is a fantastic number. And that is indicative of the fact that most of the classes here at Trinity are between 15 and 25 students.

Compare to a larger University

Now, if you compare that same faculty-to-student ratio to a much larger university, say, University of Pennsylvania where it’s also nine to one, the experience of the student at the University of Pennsylvania is vastly different because there are going to be classes that every student takes that are going to be much larger. So each individual student’s experience at the University of Pennsylvania will probably include a number of classes, maybe even half of the classes, that are well over that 25 student mark. So two things, number one, Trinity is very careful about how they calculate that student-to-faculty ratio; and secondly, it actually does mean what people assume it means, that it’s an intimate educational experience.

Intimate student experience

I tend not to pay too much attention to that student-to-faculty ratio because of the slipperiness of the statistic. What you’re really looking for when you’re thinking about that as an indicator of the student experience, what you’re trying to get is whether or not it’s an intimate student experience. The learning environment is small and intimate and you’re having that interaction with your professor.

Go beyond the statistic. Find out, number one, what’s the methodology for calculating that ratio; second, what does it really mean from a student’s perspective? That’s when you’re really going to have information you can use in deciding what college is right for you.

The post The Faculty-to-Student Ratio: Admissions Expert Says Look Deeper first appeared on College Admission Counseling.

So one thing that students, when they’re looking for a college, tend to forget is that there are different lifestyles to choose from when you’re looking at a campus. I was recently on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania and it was completely inaccessible to a stranger like me coming from the outside. Everything locked up, you had to swipe your card everywhere, often had to go through turnstiles and big gates just to get into building complexes. I’m here on the campus of Bowdoin right now, and I want to show you what the difference is like. We just walked in this building, there are not that many people around, but come here, follow me. Here’s a classroom, a tech classroom in a science building, and I can just walk right in. So follow me in here and you can see this is a lecture hall at Bowdoin. All the computer stuff is here ready for the taking. I can just walk into this kind of place.
So you really do need to think about what kind of environment you want to study in. Certainly, if you’re in Philadelphia at the University of Pennsylvania, downtown Philadelphia, the security systems are going to be much different and much more strict than a place like Brunswick, Maine at Bowdoin College. But it does make a difference. If you can walk into a classroom, is that the kind of place you want to be or do you like the fact that you’re in the urban press where security is just going to be a natural part of your daily life? So that is something that students tend to neglect when they’re thinking about which college to attend.

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