Which Has Smaller Undergraduate Class Sizes: Harvard or Caltech?

Caltech is more likely to provide the consistently smaller and more intimate undergraduate classroom experience. Its undergraduate population is far smaller than Harvard’s, and its science-and-engineering-focused curriculum is built around small courses, problem sessions, labs, and close faculty interaction. At Harvard, many introductory courses, especially popular economics, computer science, life science, and social science offerings, can be large lectures supplemented by smaller sections.

Caltech fits a student who wants a compact academic community and expects to spend substantial time working directly with professors, graduate students, and a close-knit cohort of STEM peers. Its small scale can make it easier for faculty to recognize students and for classmates to know one another across courses. The tradeoff is that Caltech’s curriculum and course catalog are much more concentrated in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, with a demanding shared core.

Harvard can still be quite intimate for a student who actively chooses seminars, advanced departmental courses, tutorials, and faculty-led research. Upper-level classes in many Harvard departments are small, and the college’s residential House system creates a smaller social setting within a much larger university. But the baseline experience is less uniformly small: Harvard offers vastly more academic options and student communities, while some courses inevitably enroll many more students.