Though other professors deny being nervous before class, Mendelsohn sees the preparation ritual as crucial. "I always take a half an hour before to get hyped up and get the adrenaline pumping," he said.

Lewis says that the bottom line on class size is that a Harvard education is what you make of it and does not hinge on whether a given class has 10 people or 1,000.

"The point of an education is to become intimately familiar with the subject, not with the teacher," Lewis says.

He says that in many cases, larger classes can be beneficial for students who may be less than chipper at 10 a.m. on a Monday morning.

"I had a small, intimate seminar with a senior faculty member that was so boring and incomprehensible that I wish it had been bigger so I and my ignorance would not have been noticed so much," Lewis says. " I don't believe that class size makes as much difference to the quality of the education as other parameters do."

Knowles says he agrees that very large classes in no way hinder students' ability to benefit from a productive learning environment. He says that instead of isolation, a large class can provide a great way for students to have a common learning experience.

"Once the audience has risen above about 100 or so, I don't think that the students' ability to learn is affected," Knowles told The Crimson last year. "It can become, instead, a vivid, shared experience. There is surely nothing intrinsically wrong with very popular lecturers."