McGill vs. CUNY vs. Cal Poly

OsakaDad
Sat, 23 Apr 2011 07:02:55 +0000

Wow, you’ve done a lot of research and seem to have a handle on costs. Here is my opinion and it will be entirely anecdotal.


I am unfamiliar with McGill other than the name itself – so, I really can’t comment on that. What I can say here is that if you want to study architecture then study architecture. It appears that the Canadian system has you wait for three years until you can take on your major fully as a junior. That is a long time to wait.
My parents met at and graduated from CUNY. Back in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s when they met, it had a great local reputation and then it went downhill for many years. It has made a come back in recent years, but other then that I can’t help you. It comes down to the actual education itself, the marketplace and what employers and future clients think of the school.
Where I can help is Cal Poly. My son was accepted there for engineering and we recently visited the school for their Open House. As you have already noted, the architecture program there is wonderful. Here is some inside information – the hands on learn by doing reputation is absolutely real and everything that they advertise. The students ran the Open House, the professors did the intros and then got out of the way letting the kids take center stage. The labs are state of the art. It is a true learn by doing institution. The California weather you described is only part of the benefit. The local natural scenery is absolutely breathtaking. People seem to live in harmony with nature and it can only be described as pristine. With regards to diversity, I have a lot to say about that. Forget the statistics. Cal Poly is very diverse. We are a mixed race family and we raised our son in Los Angeles. He went to a public high school where whites were a minority. We felt totally accepted and welcomed at Cal Poly and the campus truly celebrated diversity. There were so many ethnic related clubs at the Open House with each one selling its own culturally based menu from their booths. In my career we have traveled in over 30 countries and can recognize many languages when they are spoken. We heard Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Tagalog, Korean, Arabic, Urdu, Hindi, and French being spoken around us on campus at every turn. We saw people of every race and creed. However, I will admit that African Americans seemed underrepresented. We did see some black students and a few African Americans held important faculty positions. Since we are a mixed race family, we tend to notice other families like us. We saw a lot of mixed race couples among the students and some of the parents as well. We did finally figure out where the heavily white population on the campus came from. It appears to be the College of Agriculture. The Open House featured a full on intercollegiate rodeo to cap off the three day event! So, we went to experience it. It was AWESOME! Several universities were represented and there was everything – bull riding, bronco riding, calf roping, barrel racing, every event you could hope for. The crowd and the athletes at the rodeo were mostly white. But nobody cared and we were totally accepted at the event and felt completely at home. After the event, we were convinced that there is no discrimination at Cal Poly. So, we chose Cal Poly over significant competitors. Our kid was extremely competitive in both grades and standardized test scores. He was accepted at a lot of big name schools with very low acceptance rates. Cal Poly blew away the competition.