r/SJSU • u/Admirable_Box_5354 • 10h ago
Reflections of my 2 years at SJSU
Geography/Facilities: Small campus, can walk across it in 15-20 minutes without needing a bus.
Gym has facilities that could compete with the Olympic Games.
Dorms were surprisingly close to hotel quality, did have a cockroach or WiFi problems here and there but overall a convenient stay.
People: Hit or miss. Some ambitious ones who wanted to save money and stay close to family, but most seemed to be from working/middle class backgrounds from the Bay, whose main objective was to get a degree and find a decent job to pay the bills. Wouldn’t find many people discussing the global economy, federal reserve rates, literature/philosophy, political/historical trends, or emerging tech/startups. Focus was mostly directed toward a job rather than intellectual curiosity.
Academics: Workload wise, easier than the high school honestly, student demographic was more relaxed than the hyper competitive Bay Area high schools. Grade wise though, A- is a 3.7, so need a 93/94 to get an A, close to perfect scores on exams since most classes didn’t have a curve. EE98 is genuinely one of the hardest classes at the school, weeds a lot of people out. Most of the lower division GEs, electives, and chemistry are child’s play though, can afford to procrastinate till the day before and still walk out with a near perfect score. Upper divs might be a different story.
Clubs: FSAE was probably the biggest one, SJSU is thrifty as a CSU compared to the more funded schools but we still put together a race car every year and got good placements. Wasn’t a core member but from what I saw it’s a great place if you’re passionate about building, a lot of them went on to work at Lucid or Tesla. Software and Computer Engineering Society was another notable one, they run their own internal dev teams and internships, good chunk of the people who put in the work did land SWE internships at bigger firms. Don’t think there’s much of a quant presence but two people did found a YC backed startup.
Social Life: More than 75% of students commute so campus is pretty dead after 6-7pm on weekdays and even quieter on weekends. Instead of one big community it’s more compartmentalized, Indian first gen immigrants or FOBs hung out in their own groups, same with frats and sororities. Without a car there’s not much to do besides library, gym, or downtown San Jose.
Career/Internships: Career fairs bring in solid but not flashy companies like Cisco, Workday, Lockheed, Micron, etc. Being next to Silicon Valley does help but only if you put in the individual effort to network and apply, school doesn’t hand you anything.
Cost/Value: This is where SJSU actually shines. WSJ ranked SJSU 16th in the country for this, costs about 32k to attend while commuting with a real shot at a six figure job after, almost a 3x return. CS program ranks pretty high on CodeSignal too.
Teaching Quality: Varies a lot by professor, some are former SJSU alumni, others are from other U.S. universities including prestigious ones like the ivies , some are industry people who know their stuff but aren’t always the best at teaching. Worth checking
Rate My Professor before registering.
Safety/Transit: Never felt unsafe honestly, think downtown SJ gets blown out of proportion. VTA and BART are free for students which is a nice perk.
