Orfalea College of Business

Cal Poly focuses on hands on learning. It requires a multitude of class projects, presentations, simulations, and real life immersion into the business world to fully integrate its students for the real world. Cal Poly has its students engage in a competitive amount of group projects, which allow students to see how their knowledge stacks up to their peers as well as fosters teamwork.

I think it would be highly beneficial to invest in more teachers and a few more classrooms so that every student can get into the classes we need. Almost every quarter I have been at Cal Poly, I have had to crash classes and basically beg the teacher to let me in. It's really surprising that I have been able to keep my graduation date on time considering how many class schedules I have had to rearrange depending on which classes I could get into and what the prerequisites were. But I am happy to say that as a student that had zero credit coming into college, which I will be able to graduate on time after completing all 180 units.

The Orfalea College of Business is unique because of the "learn by doing" philosophy. I was extremely prepared in my accounting classes for my summer internship in the tax department of a public accounting firm. I began my internship with hands on knowledge of completing tax forms, using different types of accounting software, and an understanding of accounting processes. My coursework set me up for success in the work environment. Lastly, the Orfalea College of Business provides students with countless job opportunities, professional networking events, and a number of clubs to connect with colleagues.

There needs to be more availability of classes, it took me nearly 3 years to get my organizational behavior class since it always fills up really quickly.

We take classes in all business dimensions to give us a broad understand of the business world but we also concentrate in something so we can become more specialized. Over half my classes involve hands on projects and teamwork. The fast pace prepares us for the real world. All my teachers know my name.

The Finance department could focus less on midterms/exams and more on group based work and hands-on work, which it prides itself on in other departments but I don't see much of it in my own. Also, being a state school, the budget certainly hinders the school.

The classes are small enough to really interact with and gain a huge amount of knowledge from professors and other staff. They are all really dedicated to their students!

Since the program is so large, we have peer advisors, rather than an adult advisor and I have always felt that I know most of the information the peer advisors are telling me. But with adult advisors, they know more about the campus and will likely have been around for more than four years to share experience with past students. It also would be nice to have one consistent counselor instead of meeting with a different peer every time to build a relationship and maybe even ask for a letter of recommendation.

The class sizes are small and there is a large emphasis on "hands on" learning. I think employers value this experience as it tries to mimic some of the challenges that we are expected to encounter in our careers. The professors are also highly concerned with ensuring that students are prepared and have the skills that employers possess.

Our business program can be made stronger by having us interact more with the real business world. Even after all of the marketing classes I've taken, I still don't know exactly how to be successful in the field of marketing.

Our "Learn by Doing" approach ensures that we practice business application more than just theory. Within every class we have a team project or client-based projects that give us real world experience and an insight into various businesses and industries. Business grads come out of Cal Poly with the knowledge and experience one might gain from 10 different internships.

At times, the college fails to listen to the students. They solicit a lot of information from us, but then pick and choose what bits to pay attention to. Many of us are dissatisfied with the low class offerings, yet we feel not enough funding has been directed to repairing this problem.

Some of my classes have been less then fifteen students, are never more than thirty-five and always taught by professors. This allows me to develop personal relationships with professors who have dozens of years of experience and are always more than willing to help with academic as well as career questions.