Is it hard to have a college experience at Cal State Long Beach?

I am considering applying to Cal State Long Beach next fall, however I am worried it will be hard to have a true college experience there. They don’t garuntee freshman housing and many students commute. Will it be hard to have a college experience at CSULB? If not it might not be worth applying since I am competitive for most of the UCs.

I think for any student that “having the college experience” is up to you. Getting involved on-campus and meeting individuals with like interests can make a commuter college still a great option. If you want or need to live on-campus, then you should register for housing immediately so you have the best chance.

CSULB is not an easy admit unless you are local, so apply to a variety of schools, wait for your admission results and then consider all your options.

Your concerns are reasonable.

Why would you apply there with this concern ?

I’m wondering if this is how CSULB really is or if this is just a myth.

I suggest you visit the campus while in session if possible and talk to some students.

You have to remember that the CSU system was setup to have accessible quality academics for “local” applicants, so the commuter situation is prevalent at most. SDSU, SLO, Chico State, Humboldt State are CSU’s that have a less commuter feel to them so I would consider these campuses instead if that is what you are after for your college experience.

Some of the UC’s will still have a slight commuter feel such as UC Irvine, UC San Diego, UCLA and probably even UCB due to their locations near larger cities.

The majority of the Cal States do require in-coming Freshman to live on campus if outside the local service area. SDSU just changed their policy to 2 years on-campus.

The two CSUs I am considering strongly are SDSU and Cal State Chico, particularly for that reason. The fact that most CSUs require non-local freshmen to live on campus makes me a little more likely to consider more CSUs, however I probably won’t choose urban ones. I have also never heard what you said about UCs being slight commuter schools. I have toured all of them except Merced (which seems unlikely to be a commuter school) and Riverside. No one at any UC has said anything about having a commuter feel.

I have heard many comments in regards to UCI being a somewhat commuter school and that on weekends it can be pretty dead. You are going to have some local students commuting to the UC’s if they live in close proximity. Again, it really depends upon the individual student.

I see tons of what I characterize as students get off at the Berkeley BART station stop in the mornings, so I assume that there are lots of students who commute to UCB. My kid, if he wanted to take a one-hour BART ride, could save me my $17K dorm payments if he really wanted to, as there is no hard-and-fast requirement for freshmen to live on campus as there is with many other schools.

SJSU I know has a pretty hard requirement that if you live more than 30 miles away from campus, you need to stay at a dorm as a freshman. Because of the all-too-real traffic problems of Silicon Valley, I have a feeling that a lot more kids who live less than 30 miles away also stay in a dorm.

I do not know of any UC that requires Freshman to live on campus but they all guarantee housing for in-coming Freshman while many of the Cal States do have the non-local Freshman requirement for living on-campus. For the Cal states, you would need to get a housing waiver if you are non-local and do not want to live on-campus.