Santa Clara Vs San Jose

For an incoming fresh international student which of these two univs is better in terms of education , internship , career opportunities , recognition etc. San jose graduation rate is 9% vs Santa Clara’s 77% and San Jose is a much larger institution in terms off number of students . Bit confused in comparing both of them . Any advice please

Small Jesuit institution versus a large CA State university, which is considered a “commuter” school. Academically, I’d chose Santa Clara.

I am a non Christian - from India. Will it be a disadvantage in a Jesuit Institution ?

@univ2018 I would say there are absolutely no disadvantages in being a non Christian. Jesuit’s are known for their pursuit of knowledge, not any hard core religious dogma. You do have to take a religious studies class at Santa Clara, but what qualifies is pretty liberal and not necessarily even focused on the Christian faith and you certainly don’t need a Christian point of view to be respected or successful at Santa Clara.

@univ2018 also in terms of comparison, Santa Clara academically and for your career path is better, by a lot. Don’t get me wrong, San Jose State provides a quality education to a large number of students, but as @sushiritto says it is a very large commuter school and really can’t be compared to Santa Clara which is a small private school. Santa Clara is very well respected regionally and in Silicon Valley for its CS program, it has a well respected MBA program, JD program and an impressive undergraduate business school with an accounting program that is one of the major feeders for the Big 4 Public accounting firms. Depending on your major and cost of each you should have an easy choice in choosing Santa Clara. The one exception that I would make is in the event you are a music major in which case I might switch the preference to San Jose State due to the extremely high caliber music program they have.

Question about job/internship prospects for Santa Clara, as son is close to hitting “yes” for enrollment - what exactly is the school doing to help students with job searches/interviews, etc.? We’ll call the career office again this week to drill down on this, but thus far we’ve heard fairly general statements about % of grads getting jobs, “great opportunities in Silicon Valley”, etc. But how is this happening? DH and I have both worked years in SV, and it’s certainly not automatic hiring; SCU has competition from the UCs, SJSU, Stanford, etc. locally. I hope there is more assistance than just helping students set up LinkedIn pages (as at a lot of schools now) - job fairs and on-campus interviews and maybe faculty referrals would be more what I would expect to back up the hand-waving - any one have actual experience with SCU’s approach? Thanks.

@tjgchg What is your S’s major? I attended Santa Clara in ancient history and at that time they had all the support you mention above, help with resume writing, many on campus interviews and job fairs. wine/cheese mixers hosted by individual firms. I was an accounting major and I know from interacting with a couple of current students that things must still be similar on the accounting side at least. As I understand most Juniors during their summer intern with one of the big 4 CPA firms facilitated I am sure by the school. One of my clients has a Santa Clara intern who is currently a Senior and he will go to work for a Big 4 firm beginning July, but was offered the job I believe in January, so I can confirm at least that for the accounting students the schools help is strong and continues. I can’t confirm for Engineering students, however I will say that D2 works for a high profile late stage startup here and she commented that many of their CS interns come from Santa Clara.

Perhaps others with more recent experience on the engineering side can comment, however you may also want to ask those specific questions to the admissions office or call the student services/career counseling office.

chel17, thanks for this info - my son would be a CS major, so this sounds promising. The career center’s website does show regular job fairs and presentations by SV companies, so it looks like their support does go beyond other schools.