I’ve been thinking of going to back to college and after looking at Schools in the Portland, OR/Vancouver, WA area, I’m starting to seriously look at PSU?
Does anyone/has anyone attend(ed) PSU and if so, could they tell me something about? I’ve heard good things and horror stories about it and I’d like to get more opinions.
Thanks in advance.
I’m an alum of Portland State University (BS in 1997, MS in 1999), and I have to say that I enjoyed my time there.
Parking’s a bitch, though. I always took the MAX train and the bus when commuting to and from campus.
I’m curious…what kind of horror stories have you heard about PSU?
[sub]Go Vikings![/sub]
I went there my first quarter straight out of highschool. Having gone to a tiny highschool in a small town, the whole experience was intimidating to me, and I did much better after transferring to Oregon State U.
However, now that I’m older and more worldly, I think it’d be a fun place to go to school. The classes were pretty decent BUT, when I went there (fall of '95) they’d just started this dorky core-curriculum thing in which you had this home-room class type thing instead of taking the usual science, math, and English core classes. In a way it was nice, because it gave more of a support system for new college students, and I got to know the students in that class much better than in my regular lecture hall classes.
It’s an ideal school for non-traditional students majoring in say, business, I think. However, it’s hard to get the whole college experience there, if you’re going in as a freshman. It’s primarily a commuter school. Another thing to consider is that it’s a third tier university, so if you expect your degree to confer status, you might want to look at other schools. To summarize, it could be a good school, but it really depends on what you want to major in, your age, situation, and what you’re looking for in a college experience.
I have a friend who told me that…
1.) The grad requirements kept changing.
2.) Light and Heat would be cut off in the classrooms.
3.) Politics got injected into everything (ie Math Classes).
I trust the guy, but I don’t always believe him and I’m skeptical. I don’t think he actually graduated(he seems to have a hard time with commitments/likes to challenge everything), so it might just be sour grapes.
I’m 21 and really just want to get my Bachlors degree( I have an AAS) to open up more career doors for me. Since it’s accreidited, I don’t really care too much about status (The first school I went to was a trade school). I wouldn’t mind getting some of the college experience, but I’ve got other things higher on my list.
Are you looking for liberal arts? Sciences? Business?
I think 21 would be a good age to start there. Also, you can get a decent downtown apartment cheap as a student there, if you like downtown Portland (you’ll be on a waiting list, though I was offered an apartment after about 4 months).
I don’t believe the bit about graduation requirements changing. If you get the college catalog for the year you start, the requirements for your major are listed in there, and if you adhere to them, you’ll graduate. As I understand it, they are basically written in stone, so they can’t keep raising or moving the bar as you complete your courswork.
My homeroom course was pretty political, as in strongly liberal.
Computer Science. That’s what my AAS is in and I can transfer a big chunk of my credits over.
I’ve love to go for a history degree, but I haven’t been able to figure out how to actually make a living with one other then teaching…and…I’m not really much of a kid person.
Sure, I could write a book, but I don’t need a degree for that. Just a bank account and/or a library card.
Could you elaborate on this? How political do you mean? Like writing assignments like “Why the Green Party should win in 2004” or just general classroom banter? Define “homeroom” a bit more exactly.
As I recall, there were some changes for grad requirements for particular schools and departments while I was there. I didn’t recall it being a chronic problem or a widespread complaint.
Never happened to any of my classes during the time I attended PSU.
While I have no doubt that politics does creep into a number of classes, particularly those that lends itself rather well to that sort of thing (history, political science, etc.), the science and math classes I took were free of such things. In more than one class, I would hear a professor actually take the time to say, “Now what I’m about to say is strictly my own opinion…”, which indicated ot me that they at least understood the crucical difference between opinion and fact, and left it to the students to judge.
Of course, things may have changed since I left with my master’s in 1999.
Oh, and the whole “homeroom” thing…never had one, perhaps because I started at PSU as a junior. I’m not sure if they still have that particular feature now.
My wife got both a Masters and a Ph.D. (2002) at PSU and in general thought it was a good place, though she was one of the first students in the doctoral program in her department and said there were some problems with changing requirements in the early years.
I took one graduate course in biomedical ethics and loved it, even though I had to commute 90 miles each way. (It was a once a week night course.)
My impression from my wife is that PSU, since it is primarily a commuter campus with very few living in dorms, has always received the short end of the stick in comparison with OSU and U of O.
On the other hand, it is set up to accomodate people who work and are going back to finish their degree or get an advanced degree, so there are a lot of night courses available. It does have a great ambiance with the upper park blocks, an excellent library and is handy to the Portland Art Museum and other fun locations.
Back in the mid 80s I commuted from Portland to Eugene for graduate school. They had a reciprocal credit arrangement so I took a couple of classes at PSU to save myself the schlep down I-5.
I was impressed. I liked the campus, the classes were smaller and much more intense than those at U of O (English Department). Of course it was a long time ago and it was only 2 classes, but going from the U of O to PSU felt a little bit like stepping out of Never-Never Land and into the real world.
I explained the home rooms in my first post. They’re in place of the usual core courses. I’m not sure you’d take them as you’d be entering as a Junior with your associates. You’d have to check the school’s website or talk to a recruiter about it.
As far as political, it was more like “write about why everything you’ve ever done as a white person has oppressed every person of color you’ve ever crossed paths with, and why you’re sorry for it.” But then, that was just my core or “home room” experience.
Well, apparently I’ll be more like Mid-softmore, which not as good as it could be, but 2 1/2 to go is better then 4.
I apologize. I must have missed the description.
Damn. I’m screwed then. I’ve lead an admittly sheltered existance since the only people I’ve oppressed are the denzians of my SimCity(but I don’t recall if they were black or white or whatever). Of course, that is, if you assume that opression=not allowing them to park their cars in the middle of the street and occasionally saving before unleashing hideous disasters on the city.
I know, I need to get out more.
Considering that won’t work, could I write an essay on “Why, I, as a middle class unemployed American college student in the year 2003, am personally responsibiltiy for the crippling poverty of millions of French people from 1815 to 1832 and the subsequent unsucessful uprising in Paris in the Summer of 1832 that lead to the violent deaths of hundreds of people”?