4 /5 Brian Adam: Ive only ever been inside the Multiuse Building and the Rec Center for a swim class at Ocean Campus.
City College multiple sites across San Francisco and classes are offered both in person, hybrid, and online (sync and asynchronous).
Languages like Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin, Cantonese, German, Italian, French, and Tagalog are regularly offered, although sessions are fewer for higher level courses. Except for Spanish and Mandarin, the expectation is that youll transfer to an institution with more advanced level classes.
The college has a number of defunct certificate programs and cool classes that are no longer offered, eg app and game design in the computer science department.
The Ocean campus is walking distance from Balboa Park Station, a terminus for the K, M, and J trains + the BART trains going toward Daly City/Millbrae/SFO. Theres also a ton of parking, although it isnt all free.
The community college is free if youre an SF resident. You pay some or all your tuition upfront, and its refunded throughout the semester (thats been my experience).
I was able to register and get my account working in very little time.
Taking CS classes that use the Hills computer for submitting homework are hell on earth. Not all professors explain how to access the Colleges SQL database or how to remote login into the terminal. In those situations, you wonder why youre taking a class in the first place since you need to do 99% of your learning and troubleshooting on your own.
Ive only used the counseling services to get my units approved or to schedule my graduation, but the few counselors Ive interacted with are very helpful and proactive.
If you want to save money before transferring, you cant go wrong with City College. If you just want to take a class for fun or work on a certificate, there are tons of useless courses on computer networking / frontend development, paralegal stuff, construction management, and basically every Math course youd want before upper level engineering / science stuff.
