California State University

Comments about California State University:

CSU Stanislaus fit my needs perfectly. It was a local school so I could still live at home and keep my job. This, combined with a low tuition made it very affordable. As a Liberal Studies major, with the intent of pursuing a teaching degree, this was also the best choice. The teachers in the credential program were attentive and knowledgeable.

Comments about California State University:

This university was a wonderful place to obtain an education and degree. It was a nice place to transfer to from Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa. The courses transferred easily to the unversity. I graduated in 1989 with a BA in Liberal Studies and also obtained a Certificate in Japanese. These alone allowed me to enter the workforce immediately with good pay. Many prominent business leaders have graduated from CSULB. Our success stems from the quality education we received there.

The university had a wide variety of students from many nations, thus helping students to be aware of the different cultures around the world. The class sizes were appropriate and the teachers were professional in every way.

I particulary liked the library systems and open study areas. I also enjoyed the convenience of the location of the school to my home and work.

Of course, the school has dramitically improved its online courses and degrees being offered since my graduation.

I continue to receive the alumni magazine and am impressed at the constant improvements it makes for the education of the 21st century students and for future generations to come.

Comments about California State University:

This review is for Calfornia State University, Fresno

Although I did learn a lot at Fresno State, quite a bit of self teaching was required. I was in the Mass Communication and Journalism Department, Electronic Media. This involved making music videos, TV shows, news broadcasts, etc. Some teachers were absolutely amazing, such as Don Priest. Others relied on the students to practically teach courses at times.

I have spoken with many alumni and the consensus is much the same: We did not receive the skills required to make it in the "real world". When the Digital Media option (web design, HTML, etc) students graduated, they didn't know how to use Flash. In this day and age, being able to create using Flash is a given in almost every professional setting as a developer. I was a teacher's aide for a class where the teacher was attempting to teach us how to create Flash slideshows, and was asking me for help even though I had never done it before.

Similar experiences have been shared in the Graphic Design department as well, where classes are difficult to get into and often have waiting lists. I know quite a few people who had to switch majors from that department just so they could graduate because they couldn't get that one last class they needed, over multiple semesters.

It is an affordable school with a surrounding area that swells with school pride. Football games for the Bulldogs are a blast, even when they don't win. I recommend this school to a lot of people because I did truly love the experience. However, do your research on whichever major you are interested in before you take the leap to Fresno State.

Comments about California State University:

I picked Cal State Fullerton when I was ready to transfer from a junior college, and I chose this particular school for its English program, since that was my major. The English department has many course offerings and specialized classes for different genres of literature- everything from modern novels, to Medieval lit, to Chaucer and Shakespeare specific classes. There are even classes on linguistics, language theory, and literature theory, which are challenging and make your brain kind of hurt, but in a good way. And, if you like genre fiction, there are courses offered in children's literature, science fiction, fantasy fiction, and horror fiction, so it's not just reading dead poets from the 1800's and Hemingway to get a degree in English, there are many options. The instructors really know their material, and even though they've been teaching it for a while (most all of my professors either had tenure, or had been teaching at Fullerton for quite some time) they find ways to keep their own interest in the material, which translates into making it interesting for the students as well.

Outside my specific major, there seemed to be a lot of other interesting course offerings as well, such as the options for upper division electives- one of my favorite non-major classes was History of Rock Music. I also worked for the College of Business as a student employee, and the professors in that department, from what I could see, did a good job of being accessible to their students.

The school was just starting to feel crowded and just beginning to become impacted when I graduated in 2007, and it was more of a commuter school then; it seems they are building more dorms and trying to break that mold a bit. Tuition costs were a bit on the high side, and I am sure that has only gotten worse with the budget issues in California from the last few years, though.

Comments about California State University:

In expensive living cost and tuition.
It's a college with History founded in the late 1887.
Non- Commuter school. Meaning most of the students are not still living at home.
Amazing social environment.

Cons: Amazing social environment can lead to lack of focus