California Polytechnic State University - San Luis Obispo

Date: Jan 03 2014
Major: History/Histories (art history/etc.) (This Major's Salary over time)
CalPoly's faculty is average at best. I transferred here from a community college that had a higher ratio of PhD's and pioneers in their fields. I had always heard that CalPoly had an excellent reputation for academics, and maybe that's true in their engineering and agriculture programs, but if you take any other classes here, the professors are very hit-or-miss. Most of them are tenured, and extremely apathetic. Expect to be taught entirely from an outdated textbook. Learn to regurgitate what the professors want to hear. Creativity is not a virtue here.

My main complaint with CalPoly is with the administration. I had to submit my transcripts to them 3 times because they kept losing them. When I transferred out, I had to request my transcripts from them numerous times because they couldn't be bothered to send them out. Every term that I was here, they put a hold on my registration for some irrelevant nonsense, such as claiming that they needed copies of my vaccination records even though I was over 24 and didn't live on campus, and therefore should have been exempt according to their own catalog.

During the Summer 2004 term, they raised the tuition rates 2 weeks AFTER classes started, and then threatened to kick out every student who didn't pay the balance. We all had to pay up, since they had us by the balls. Then they did it again a week later.

I transferred out in Fall 2004 and was given conflicting information regarding how to drop my classes; I was told to fill out the green form at the window, turn it in to the bursar, and that would be it. 6 months later, I started receiving mildly-threatening phone calls regarding an unpaid balance there for tuition. I told them I had transferred out and had filled out the green form, as instructed, only to be told that

there is no green form, and never has been.

That took several more months to resolve, and I still ended up having to pay a part of the balance, all because they have no idea what they're doing.

I could go on and on, but let me just sum up by saying that CalPoly's administration is by far the worst of any school I have ever encountered. Expect everything to take 10 times longer that it should. Expect to pay every administrative fee twice, because they will constantly "lose" your payments.