Williams vs Sarah Lawrence: which college has smaller classes?

A large majority of Williams classes enroll fewer than 20 students, and its tutorial system is a distinctive feature built around pairs of students meeting closely with a professor. Sarah Lawrence is also very small and seminar-oriented, but Williams has the clearer edge if your priority is the highest frequency of tiny classes.

One concrete difference is the Williams tutorial model. In many tutorials, only two students are enrolled, and each week they alternate presenting and critiquing each other’s work with the professor. That creates an unusually intimate academic experience that very few colleges can match, even among other small liberal arts schools.

Another difference is scale across the curriculum. Williams has a larger faculty and stronger departmental depth, which helps it offer many small sections without relying as much on larger introductory formats. Sarah Lawrence classes are often discussion-based and writing-heavy, but its academic structure is centered more on seminars and one-on-one conference work than on the kind of ultra-small, systematically built tutorial experience Williams is known for.

If what you mean by “feels smaller” is regular face-to-face interaction with professors, both schools do that well. But if you mean the most consistently tiny class settings and the best chance of being in rooms where your voice has to matter every meeting, Williams has the advantage.