Cal Poly SLO - up for D26
D26 and her dad visited CPSLO yesterday. They went on the engineering specific tour (2hrs). They had originally planned to do a general campus tour in the afternoon, but decided to skip it and come home because D felt she’d seen enough on the engineering tour to get a feeling for the school.
The tour was led by 4 engineering students. D was surprised that 3 of them were female, and this helped her to be able to see herself as an engineering student there. (D’s big brother S23 is an engineering student at our nearby university, and D has noted to me how women seem pretty underrepresented in most of the departments there.) Everyone was friendly, they were all in different majors, and they talked about their majors and how they had chosen them. One tour leader had switched from biomedical to civil engineering, and this made a positive impression on my D. (“It’s possible to change majors!”)
D was able to talk to several students (including the tour leaders) and got a pleasant friendly vibe. She thought it felt similar to UC Davis (another school that she likes very much). Both D and her dad were also very impressed by the physical facilities and labs they got to tour. D noted that she liked hearing about the small class sizes and how the classes are taught by professors rather than graduate students (although to be fair, in the past she has taken summer classes taught by graduate students, and she actually really liked those classes and teachers, and appreciated how the grad students were closer to her in age! 
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The only really negative thing D reported from her visit was that every student said the campus food was not great. She also said she didn’t love having cars driving and parking all over campus (she compared it to UC Davis where you mostly just see bikes), but she felt that was a minor detail.
She did feel that the engineering tour was very helpful in thinking about which major to apply to, and she said she would recommend any student in her position (undecided about engineering discipline) should go on this specific tour.