I am admitted to both CalPoly & Rutgers CS. I have not received any scholarship offers from CP but I am invited into Rutgers Honors College that comes with a $10K per annum renewable scholarship. Total cost of attendance (factoring the scholarship) would be about the same. At the moment I have no preference. Any inputs & suggestions are much appreciated.
Theses schools are very different. There are 67,000 students at Rutgers, almost 20,000 of them are graduate students. Cal Poly only has 20,000 students. Less than 1000 are graduates and they don’t offer doctorates, so very few of them are required to teach. Classes are smaller at Poly, by a lot and all taught by professors, including labs. So, on the surface, it seems like Poly is a no brainer, but that might not be the case for you.
Rutgers has a sprawling campus, but much of it is classic, old, east coast buildings. They get four seasons. They have big time athletics. Maybe most importantly of all, regional tech jobs are easier to find where ever you go to school. If you want to live on the east coast, you’ll have to work harder to find a job if you go to Poly. The reverse is true if you want to live west, but go to Rutgers.
I want to immediately say choose Cal Poly, but it really depends on your priorities, as it does in all school selections for each individual student.
A visit would easily help you make your decision if that’s possible. Good luck.
EDIT: I notice you’re an international. That can sway things too. Cal Poly is fairly homogeneous, mostly white Californians. They are open and accepting, but you may find more students from your country at Rutgers simply because it’s giant. I’d call both schools and ask them about their international students unless you are super easily adaptable and really don’t care.
Actually, I’d say call poly is relatively diverse with 12%Asian and 15% Latino.
To me picking cal poly would be a no-brainer too. But it depends what’s important to you, High may not be what’s important to me, so tell us what you’re looking for in a college 
Thank you for your replies. I had a chance to visit Rutgers but not CP. Quality of education (and opportunity to get a better job) is most important to me but as an Asian, families and friends are more concerned with reputation.
Is your family’s concern a key criterion ?
Rutgers has a relatively good reputation on the East Coast except in New Jersey.
Cal poly is very highly thought of on the west coast, on par with some UC’s.
Job placement very good at Cal Poly. Great track record
I would also choose SLO… Great school.
Cal Poly has an open house on the weekend of April 14-15. If you can make it out it would be well worth the trip to help your decision.
@MYOS1634 It is somewhat since my parents are paying for it.
@Baylorpoly Unfortunately, I am half way around the world and still in school. I don’t think I will get a chance to visit.
Do your parents have an opinion?
For cs, it’s hard to think how you could beat a school with ties to Silicon Valley That’s as highly considered as call poly. Do they have a problem with it and if so do you know what the hangup is, or was it just a question to make sure you has missed something about Rutgers?
I would say the only downside to SLO is that it is not near any major airport so flying home will be an issue. You would have to go down to Santa Barbara (small airport but does have flights to the East Coast) or up to San Jose. I would check to see what kind of flights are available for your home and the costs involved along with getting transportation from SLO to these airports.
How do you decide which is more “prestigious”? Poly is certainly way harder to get into. According to LinkedIn Apple has about 550 employees from Poly and 150 from Rutgers. It is a west coast company, but Rutgers is 3 times bigger. What metric matters to you?
Parents think Honors College is a big deal. From what I read, I am a bit concerned about dorm room and class availability (low 4-year graduation rate) at CalPoly but I know I probably will have more job offers since CP is close to Silicon Valley. At the moment I do not intend to get an MS so CP looks the way to go but it will cost more if I don’t graduate in time.
Yes, honors college at Rutgers is a big deal - if you were studying history or philosophy there’d be no doubt Rutgers Honors would be way better.
did you apply to anything like this at Cal poly? Look into it.
But all in all, for cs, slo is better.
No, there were no separate application for honors college at both school. I believe both consider all applicants that apply before a certain deadline for merit scholarship.
Merit scholarships may not exist at California poly but a special honors college may. Look into it.
Honors colleges are very important at giant schools like Rutgers. They allow students to get an experience that approximates a smaller school. The thing is, EVERYONE at Cal Poly gets the type of experience that only students in the HCs can get at the giant schools. Unlike Rutgers, every Poly class is taught by a professor, even labs and discussions. Classes will be smaller than they are at Rutgers. You classmates on average will be smarter at Poly. All in all, most schools honors colleges are there to try to attract highly qualified students away from far more selective institutions in order to boost their USNWR rankings. The advantage to the student who chooses that route, usually it’s a better financial deal. I’m not trying to be snide, but if that’s what your parents think, they clearly don’t understand the way US colleges and universities work.
@eyemgh My parents and I clearly do not understand as much as you do so I appreciate your comments. Can you help clear up issues about the low 4-year graduation rate at CP? $38K a year is a lot so I would like to graduate in 4 years.
Their 4 year graduation rate is thrown off by several things. First and foremost, roughly 25% of Poly students are engineers and most of the engineering curricula are more than 4 years. CS and most other degrees are 180 hours, but engineering is 200 hours. Architecture is a 5 year degree. That throws it off too. Combine that with the fact that classes used to be hard to get and you have a low 4 year rate. Now scheduling is easier. If you don’t dodge specific professors or time slots and pass all your classes, you should be right on target for 4 years. That’s 15 hours per quarter. That’s assuming you don’t bring any hours from high school in.
Engineering typically takes 5 years so that throws the graduation rate off. In addition, engineering is very hard and many American students give up and switch to another major, so since they applied for one major and followed that path, they have lots of classes to take to “make up” for it.
I agree that scheduling has become easier.
Cal Poly however doesn’t accept any foreign credits, even if all other schools in the country do. They only accept APs.
That’d be a plus for Rutgers, along with Honors College (Honors isn’t a gimmick: Rutgers is trying to create an elite experience to retain all these high-achieving NJ who try to get out of their home state to Penn State, Temple, UMass Amherst, even SUNYs, and privates all over.) However, for CS, weather, campus, general environment, Cal Poly has the edge - for comfort of learning, dorms, class sizes in Honors, foreign credit transfers, Rutgers has the edge.