Are Villanova or Richmond better for small class sizes?

Richmond has the edge for small class sizes and a more consistently personal classroom experience. It is a smaller university overall, and that usually translates into fewer large introductory lectures, easier access to professors, and a campus culture built around close faculty-student interaction. If your priority is regularly being in discussion-based classes rather than navigating bigger lecture sections early on, Richmond is more likely to deliver that.

One important difference is scale. Villanova is notably larger, so while it still offers strong teaching and many reasonably sized classes, you are more likely to encounter bigger sections, especially in popular intro courses and business-related areas.

Another concrete differentiator is how each school is structured around faculty access. Richmond is known for emphasizing undergraduate teaching in a way that often shows up in class format, advising, and professor availability. Villanova students can absolutely build strong relationships with faculty too, but the day-to-day classroom feel is a bit less uniformly small because of the university’s larger size and broader enrollment.

That said, Villanova is not a place dominated by huge lecture halls in the way some large public universities are. If you want smaller classes above all else, though, Richmond is the one that more reliably matches that preference.