California Lutheran University

I was a former student at CLU and was going to be a junior starting the following year. But I instead transferred to a different university. Unlike the other comments you may have read I still truly enjoyed my time at this school, and that was mostly due to the faculty in the departments. The faculty here at this school is great, they have been so welcoming and warm and may I even dare say it receptive to the students that it truly tugged at my heart strings to leave. For the faculty if you are driven and excel in your classes, go into the office to chat and want to learn more about the subject, you will go places at this university. The professors truly take the time to get to know you and don't mind once in a while just light hearted conversations. And if asked give great life advice. As a math major I can say I spent hours in the math department just talking and learning more about life and math from these people, and I can say without their support and belief in me I don't think I would be here writing this. I will touch on this in the later paragraph.

For this school, since it is a very small liberal arts school, when asked about it not many people will know the school. Start to get used to that when you come here because it will happen a lot. So that comes to the question of how will this effect me getting a job. Well in my personal opinion, its gonna be hard to get a job from this school as an undergraduate, because of the small name. But there is hope and that is graduate school. I say this because at CLU they offer so much research potential to the undergraduates, it effectively oozes out the school. I mean in every department and every major, people have to do some sort of senior research to graduate. This is great for graduate schools, because it shows you can do the next level work and work with other people to accomplish something new. If you are also looking for a competitive atmosphere you will not find it here. The students here are more into the co-operative work which is good, but the studies will not drive you to push the limit unless you ask for more. Being self driven at CLU is key to get the most out of this university's academics. So if your worried about the academics just know that graduating from this school, going to graduate school is the best choice.

Now comes to my difficulty and why I transferred. So to be honest I only stayed sane enough because of the faculty and how great the professors were. The student body though was on another level of bad. The kids here are very friendly, but at the same time really like to stay within their own specific group. It makes it really hard to join a group once they have formed. So if you are thinking of college as a place where people will hang with complete strangers and then become friends, not at this school at least. And this revelation is sad because this school you would think would be more unified but in reality, its seem like 1/3 are commuters and those who don't commute live around the area so they go home on the weekends. So usually by the time the weekend rolls around more than half the campus is gone, that's right for a student body of 2100 that's a lot of students still attached to home. So for a student living and stuck on campus its tough because its quiet, starts to feel lonely, and no activities on the weekends to distract you. So you can think of the social life at this school as high school 2.0. To back up my point about how lonely and hard socially it can get at this school. Roughly 1/4 of the student body utilizes the psychiatric center that is for free on campus. They get psych counseling here and mainly just someone to talk to (I would know since I used it). One week I remember my appointment got canceled because they had an influx of students coming in with suicidal thoughts. Now that's pretty bad for a small school in my opinion. I also share this sentiment with many others across the campus (for the few people I confided in), and even if you don't hear it from someone you know they are thinking it as well. So if you are a transfer or a incoming freshman, your getting a good academic school but take heed in that things socially can be very tough.I hope this post has helped you and shed some light on CLU. Best of luck out there.