ASU vs. Notre Dame: Which Offers Better Undergraduate Teaching?

The biggest practical tradeoff is scale: Notre Dame offers a smaller, residential private-university environment where undergraduates are more likely to encounter discussion-based classes and sustained faculty contact, while ASU offers far more course options and pathways but requires more initiative to find small-class experiences. Notre Dame’s undergraduate focus, tight campus community, and lower student-to-faculty ratio make professor access more consistently built into the ordinary student experience.

At ASU, introductory courses can be large, especially in popular majors, and the experience varies substantially by college, program, and instructor. Many ASU professors are excellent and accessible through office hours, research labs, and smaller upper-level courses, but students need to actively use those opportunities. Barrett, The Honors College, can meaningfully change the equation by providing smaller honors seminars, faculty interaction, and a more close-knit academic setting within ASU.

Notre Dame also has research-active faculty, but its classroom culture is more uniformly undergraduate-centered across majors. Students commonly have stronger continuity with professors, and the residential setting makes informal academic relationships easier to develop. ASU may be especially appealing if its particular program, honors opportunities, cost, or location is a much better fit.

For undergraduate teaching alone, Notre Dame has the clearer edge. It is more consistently structured to provide accessible professors and an engaged classroom experience without requiring a student to seek out special programs or navigate a very large university system.