Is CSUN a good school?

Mamelot
Thu, 05 Nov 2015 00:49:26 +0000

@“aunt bea” this is so helpful!! I wish I had run across something like this last year when I started looking into California state colleges. It definitely would have made all my research a lot easier!

I had two sibs who both attended UC schools from out of state - an older brother who went to Cal Berkeley and a younger sister who started at Irvine and transferred to Berkeley later on. Both were able to establish residency and in-state tuition status after a year; however, this was back in the 70’s / 80’s and the threshold was definitely more strict by the time my sister applied - she had to prove financial independence, etc. It doesn’t surprise me to learn that CA has tightened up this loophole considerably since then and we’ve pretty much figured that D2 would not be able to claim in-state tuition status during her 5 + years at at CSU school (and five years is far more realistic than four).

Due to higher tuition, a likely need for a car for some of her CSU choices and no expectation of merit aid, it’s no surprise that CSU is NOT her first choice (nor ours). Her interest, however, is animation and obviously the location is good for that plus the schools have outstanding programs. She knows people from Fullerton who have gotten jobs in the industry so wanted to apply just in case. I think her situation is more particular than, say, someone who wanted to do engineering or business or nursing or other popular majors which exist in numerous quality programs throughout the country. Unfortunately, D2 is going to be paying a lot regardless of where she attends because the best programs tend to be nationally-ranked private art colleges or excellent state programs in states we are not residents of.

If someone is good with google or patient enough to dig through some of the school websites (or even just the CSU main website) they can actually find enrollment #'s for non-residents. What they’ll find is that there are a few but I mean a few. Per College Navigator the enrollment of non-resident/non-international students (so a typical OOS US student) would be about 1%of the student population for many of the CSU campuses.