[quote=sdrealtor]And its not just that. SD is rapidly becoming a world class city it ways it’s never been before. The Shell downtown is a great entertainment venue. SDSU will have a right sized stadium opening next year. The campus will expand greatly to the west at that site also. The sports arena is getting rebuilt. There is a high end Beach front resort in Encinitas now attracting A listers on a regular basis. Bill Gates is currently building himself a massive beachfront compound in Del Mar. UCSD is building an 8th college and there are cranes all over the golden triangle. Carpool lane going north and more south opened recently adding about 10 more miles of it each way on the 5. There trolley blue line just opened. The list just goes on and on. Taken alone none of these is close to earth shattering but taken together the inertia and velocity of change taking place here are stunning![/quote]
Yep… agreed. Beyond everything you said there, SDSU is doing some fine things down there off by the 8.
SDSU-West in Mission Valley will be transformative for that institution: first by raising its total student population from 33K to 50K in the current ~200 acres landlocked mesa in the College Area; establish its STEM research arm in Mission Valley – throw money to attract researchers and faculty to boost its university ranking profile (always a pissing contest), to reach R1 research university status by 202X; lastly, the new stadium and its success with revenue sports (football + basketball) in recent years will set itself up nicely to potentially get invited into one of the Power 5 athletics conferences (Big 12 Conference if it ever expanded West and go to 14/16 members), when college football conference alignment happens again in 2024/25 when existing TV deals go expire — SD is a large TV market with only 1 major sports team in town (Padres) and is a fertile ground for recruiting.
Years ago, between Soccer City and SDSU-West, I voted the latter, as I always vote for academic development, which in theory, would bring in research, companies and jobs.
One data point I find interesting is, in most years (not 2021, the most recent year), UCSD And SDSU are always in the top-10 most applied to colleges in the country. Now, granted, this is mostly due to CA has the largest population, and most college kids are sending multiple applications to their reach, target and safety schools — but I would like to think SD is just a nice town for kids to study!
So even the 18 year kids are voting for SD with their college applications!
One more thing, SDSU is quietly turning into the best overall CSU school (Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo still gets the brightest kids within the CSU school system due to its strong emphasis in STEM since it was stood-up, but may not in the distant future as SDSU spurs up its STEM programs).
I looked at SDSU latest freshman profile, basically, incoming freshmen has 3.82 GPA and 1223 SAT, which 20 years ago, could’ve gotten you into UCSD, before the massive foreign student body invasion from China in the 2010s.
