Cornell or Williams: which has smaller class sizes and a more intimate classroom experience?

Williams is much more likely to give you the smaller, more intimate classroom experience you’re describing. It is a small liberal arts college built around discussion-heavy classes, close faculty contact, and a scale where professors are expected to know students well. Cornell can absolutely offer strong professor relationships too, but the overall classroom experience is less consistently personal because the university is much larger and includes many departments with very different teaching styles.

At Williams, small classes are the norm rather than something you have to hunt for. Many courses are seminar-style, and the school is known for tutorials, where two students meet regularly with a professor for especially close reading, writing, and discussion. That setup is about as personal as college teaching gets, and it matches what you said you want.

Cornell is more mixed. In some majors, especially in the humanities and parts of the social sciences, you can still find small upper-level seminars and professors who know students well. But intro courses, popular majors, and many STEM sequences are more likely to involve larger lectures, discussion sections, and teaching assistants, especially early on. The experience can become more personal later, but it is not the default across the university.

If your top priority is that most of your classes feel discussion-based from the start, Williams fits that preference more naturally. Cornell makes more sense for a student who wants the breadth and research scale of a major university and is comfortable with the fact that classroom intimacy will depend a lot more on department, course level, and how intentionally they seek out smaller settings.