I'm a middle-age man returning to college to study business. I went to my local community college for a couple of years, and then transferred to City College of San Francisco for one year to get some classes I needed before going on to upper division somewhere else.CCSF is fine for a community college. Like all schools, choosing your teachers is key, so look on the web (try Rate My Professor), or talk to other students once you get here. Doing this, my five teachers this year were either good, very good, or great, so I'm quite happy with my overall educational experience at CCSF.
I did have some problems with the bureaucracy in admissions when I transferred, and the people in financial aid are generally not very sharp, but once that was settled everything else was OK.
Because it's a community college in a major city, CCSF attracts many young students. Although some of them would participate in class discussions, and were obviously highly motivated to be there, I was surprised by how many of my fellow students would not participate in class, did not do their homework, and did not do well on tests. I guess this is because the cost of attending CCSF is so reasonable for in-state students. In other words, don't expect to be intellectually stimulated by any class discussions. Most of the students sit there in silence everyday. I focused on my teachers, the textbooks, and on the handful of students that were motivated and participating (as I was), and got the education I was seeking.
The school is generally a little run down, but if you squint your eyes you can see that most of the buildings were probably quite remarkable when they were first built. Here in 2006 they are in the midst of building a brand new medical building, and another big building too on the other side of campus (possibly an art building?).
It is definitely a commuter school, and there are terrible traffic jams in the mornings, so expect to spend 10-15 minutes trying to get into the lone parking lot after you arrive here.
They have a very large physics department, and I had a good experience there in the one "Intro" class that I took.
They have one of the top football teams in the state (if not the country), and their football facility is quite impressive and right in the middle of campus, but that was not my thing.
Overall, they offer many classes; you can get the education that you would expect from a community college, and they are geared to transfer students into both the California State University and University of California systems.
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