How do undergraduate class sizes compare at UT Austin and Northwestern?

Northwestern is more likely to provide smaller undergraduate classes and routine professor interaction across a typical major, while UT Austin offers that experience most consistently in upper-level courses, honors sections, and smaller departments. Northwestern’s much smaller undergraduate population and private-university structure mean seminars and discussion-based courses tend to appear earlier in the curriculum. At UT Austin, many gateway courses in fields such as computer science, business, economics, biology, chemistry, and psychology can be very large lectures.

At Northwestern, introductory STEM, economics, and popular social-science courses can still enroll hundreds of students, so a small-class experience is not guaranteed during the first year. However, these courses commonly include smaller discussion or lab sections led by graduate teaching assistants. Upper-level humanities, social sciences, and many major seminars can offer substantial access to faculty.

UT Austin’s scale is most noticeable in high-demand majors. Large lectures may be taught by excellent professors, but direct contact often happens through office hours, labs, recitations, or teaching assistants rather than in class. By junior and senior year, departmental electives, research groups, and capstone courses are often much smaller, particularly outside the most crowded majors.

For meaningful faculty relationships at UT Austin, the major and academic program matter a great deal: an honors program, a smaller college or department, undergraduate research, and consistent office-hour attendance can substantially change the experience. Northwestern has a structural advantage for students who want smaller classes to be the default rather than something they deliberately seek out.