Shmitter S

Review of Cal Poly, SLO

This school almost never seems to have the student...

This school almost never seems to have the students' best interests at heart. This is likely due to poor administration. I am an Electrical Engineering student so it should be known that this is a review from the engineering side of the school. Regardless, they have very few professors who actually do their job well, and they never seem to get rid of the professors who continually get deplorable reviews from the students. The whole "learn by doing" motto is mostly a sham, there isn't really any more hands-on experience provided by the classes than any other technical school (except maybe engineers from Berkeley, who have next to no lab sessions) and the lab teachers are mostly unhelpful anyway. I am a senior now and feel like I have not been able to gain any real practical knowledge yet from any of the labs.

Now as for the School in general, the food is terrible and overpriced, especially for freshman on the meal plan, the department chairs and pretty much anyone in a high authority position have no interest in helping students. If you ever need a question answered or information that you can't just look up online, you'll be stuck calling people for the whole day as they transfer you around and around since no one wants to help you, even though you know they could if they tried. I needed credit transferred from a study abroad program, and they refused to help me since they were too lazy to get in contact with the other university. I needed to get work space for a club, and the department chair just kind of waved me away like I wasn't worth his time. Additionally, I had to miss two days of classes for an internship, and the two of the professors simply never responded when I asked them to make sure it was okay, and since they were lab sessions, and since they were lab TAs who didn't actually have an office, I was just dropped from the two lab sessions because they never bothered to read my email, and when I contacted the department chair, he also simply ignored me.

This school has been a pretty crappy experience overall, and honestly, I would tell any engineer to go somewhere else first.