Program size at college...

Lately I've been working on a project outside of Anycollege that is involving several high school students who are going to be seniors next year and are starting to narrow down their search for colleges. While talking to them (as many of them are considering going to college for the same undergraduate degree I have) an interesting topic has come up: the size of the department that you're going to.

Most college search and fit characteristics tend to revolve around location of the campus (city/rural), overall size of the campus, extracurricular opportunities, class size etc.... but very rarely do I ever hear come up "how big is the department?"

This might seem like it directly relates to class size but I don't believe this is the case.

Reason being, you can have a tiny department, but this could mean they only offer some classes every other year, thus forcing two years worth of classes to take it all at once and doubling the amount of people in the class.

Also, there is access to opportunity. Again, the key is to find the happy medium. If it's super small you may be guaranteed the chance to get involved in everything your academic department or school does, thus giving you a lot of opportunity but not much competition. On the other hand, you can have a larger department where students have to compete to get a shot to be involved, but can't always be in everything thus decreasing involvement. (Or, the department can be huge and competition can be crazy and you can only be involved occasionally... ) So what's the best route?

I think it depends on your personality, what you are comfortable with, what your career goals are and how you feel about the campus. Again, a small department you'll get to know everyone very well (some will say too well) but a larger department you'll have more opportunity to meet more people but maybe not get to know everyone quite as well.

However, I do think you should also seriously consider the size of your academic department when looking for a college, in addition to all of those other things. Sure it's one more thing to look at, but if you make the right choice the first time you'll be much more successful and happier down the road. [Insert my theme of transferring is a pain here].

What do you think? Is department size something to consider?