Cornell vs Amherst: which has smaller class sizes?

The biggest practical tradeoff is scale: Amherst is a small liberal arts college built around small, discussion-based undergraduate classes, while Cornell is a large research university where class sizes vary much more and introductory courses can be quite large. If small classes are your top priority, Amherst is the one more consistently aligned with that preference. Cornell absolutely has small upper-level seminars too, but the overall undergraduate experience includes more large lectures, especially early on and in high-enrollment departments.

Amherst has no graduate schools, so the institution is centered almost entirely on undergraduates. That usually means more direct access to professors, more seminar-style courses across the curriculum, and fewer situations where your first contact in a class is a TA rather than the professor. Its academic culture is also very discussion-heavy, which matters if you learn best by talking through ideas rather than sitting in lecture halls.

Cornell offers a broader range of majors, labs, and specialized resources, but that breadth comes with a wider spread in class size. In some humanities and social science courses, you can find intimate classes, especially once you move beyond the intro level. But in many fields, particularly STEM and popular intro courses, larger lectures are a normal part of the experience.

So on the specific question of smaller class sizes, Amherst has the clearer edge. Cornell can still work well for a student who wants a big university’s opportunities and is okay with a mix of large and small classes, but Amherst is the more reliably small-class environment.