Class size can be a problem, especially for freshmen.
Smaller recitation sessions humanize the largest courses. Scheduling conflicts are not unusual, and required courses are often the most difficult to get into. Students seem to accept that some degree of faculty unavailability is the necessary trade-off for having professors who are experts in their fields at a school where graduate education and research gets lots of the attention. Information was gathered from administrators, students and visits by Fiske staffers to some of the institutions. In addition to UB, the SUNY campuses profiled are the university centers in Albany, Binghamton and Stony Brook and the colleges in Geneseo and Purchase.