I can’t speak to CalState Long Beach but I can speak to Chapman. It’s basically the SoCal students who don’t want to attend a CalState. There is so much incompetent behavior by administration, it’s unbelievable. My daughter attended for 1.5 years, then transferred. Many people she knew were unhappy and transferred or just stayed. She should have left sooner, it’s a tuition factory with bad administration, down to housing, RAs, deans, etc. One can graduate in 3 years because it’s such an easy school. They hire 4 instructors and call it a department. They pretend they are a private school but do not treat the students well like a private school would because it’s run by dumb people, many who are Chapman grads. We had spoken to Chapman alums and they loved it there but they were in frats. They start partying on Wednesdays because a lot of them have no classes on Fridays so they return home to SoCal for 3-day weekends; weekends are a ghost town. The cafeteria is back to the high school scenario of cliques. The RAs won’t allow the students to leave their doors propped open due to being a “fire hazard”—REALLY?! My daughter had an issue with roommates bullying her and the Resident Director wouldn’t mediate, then the female dean didn’t want to deal with it, she was dismissive. My daughter moved out and missed the deadline for dropping a class and even knowing what she went through, the other dean said he wouldn’t delete the “W” from her transcript (private schools usually do favors). There isn’t much housing except Chapman Grand and Panther Village (both 20 minutes from campus so it’s like commuting and living in an apartment on your own). They assume everyone is from SoCal so we were waiting for an email from Housing so she could move into an on-campus apartment for the summer and the admin told us to just go wait at home because she assumed we were from SoCal. She moved into Davis Hall, which was basically like a Motel 6 apartment. The downtown is a joke, there’s not much good food unless you have a car and most SoCal students have cars so they don’t hangout downtown. The surrounding area seems sketchy. The “professors” are not high quality. There are 47% Caucasian SoCal phonies who are not the sharpest knives in the drawer. There isn’t enough parking so commuters have to arrive early. Take a tour, and everything looks great. I know money isn’t an issue, but I suggest attending CalState and saving money, probably higher quality professors. It’s the worst feeling to pay Chapman’s high tuition and feeling scammed.
The only reason to attend Chapman is for film majors and their drama program is supposedly good too. My suggestion: If you decide to attend Chapman and don’t like it after a semester, scoot on out, it won’t improve.