San Jose state vs Cal Poly Pomona

turtlerock
Mon, 29 Feb 2016 18:00:45 +0000

@fluffy2020 , the best “college experience” is completely subjective to the individual, so it’s unlikely to answer your question directly. However, we can offer some insight from facts and personal experience. I’m curious, have you visited/toured either of these schools and what is your intended major? I am a current SJSU senior with limited knowledge of CPP, but here’s what I see:

They are both big campuses with huge student bodies, both 20k+ (SJSU ~30k, CPP ~23k). Both offer opportunity in tons of student clubs and Greek organizations.

SJSU is in the 1m+ population of metropolitan San Jose with the campus sitting literally across the street from SJ City Hall. CPP, on the other hand, is in a much more suburban city that’s only about 10% the population of SJ, although you could drive about 30 miles to get to downtown L.A. (Pomona is still technically considered part of L.A. metro). Of course, this can likely mean that SJSU is a much more commuter heavy school than CPP. That said, there’s A LOT to do within walking distance to SJSU, not to mention the things to do if you take a quick light rail ride (or a not as quick CalTrain up to SF). I’m not sure if there’s much right around Pomona, nor how easy it is to take transit to L.A. proper for things to do.

Average high temps are sliiiightly cooler in SJ than in Pomona.

Both have extensive engineering programs, but SJSU has all kinds of tech company HQ literally down the street and in their “back yard” of neighborhoods - I won’t even list any because there’s a lot, from minor to major.

Not sure about CPP dorms, but I hear the SJSU dorms can be fairly comfortable (relative to other dorms), and they’re building a brand new dorm building or two set to open this coming fall if I am not mistaken. I lived off-campus my entire time, so I can’t say much other than that. The SJSU campus is in the middle of downtown SJ, which isn’t the safest location on certain times of the day, and crime has been known to happen (I get email alerts from SJSU every other week or so about a burglary, etc on campus). SJSU has also finished building a new student union building that opened fall 2014, compete with food court, study areas, ballroom, etc.

Sorry, my thoughts aren’t exactly organized. Do you have some specific inquiries, so that maybe I can more directly provide some experiential knowledge?