James Herrera

Rebecca Brewer

AVID 10

10-16-18

Sonoma State University

In the northern part of California, Sonoma resides near multiple vineyards and scorched

mountains due to recent forest fires and small outbreaks that had started due to the blistering

heat waves. In Sonoma, there are student housing, multiple buildings with specific purposes

(mostly libraries, labs for science, etc), beautiful scenery to make you feel like you are away

from home but at the same time still at home.

Within the campus, housing for freshmen is free and includes free meals included with

the choice of free housing. After your freshman year, you can choose whether or not you want

housing on campus or to live with a fraternity and what type of meal plan you want for the year.

You can also get your first job or a job on campus that will help you rake in quite of bit of money

while you spend your years there. Sonoma is actually the largest employer of students with

400+ and hiring 200 students and most of the employers help students with their job and will

change their hours to make it easier on the student. Some positions include; dishwasher,

busser, waiter, baker, event staff, and cashiers.

When taking classes, they will normally be 20-29 students per class and most of them

will actually be pretty smart due to the required 3.2-4.0 g.pa requirement and the average SAT

score of 980. And to help with the cost of everything, like textbooks and other costly things, the
high amount of 5,000$ should cover all your freshman needs. Throughout the freshmen year,

you will be able to choose your major. Some of the most popular ones are; Biology, Business

administration, counseling, early childhood studies, and engineering studies. These majors can

also result in getting a scholarship in the major if work is good enough to get one. When

applying for the scholarships, you must keep in mind that there are other students fighting to get

the same one you are.

Whenever students feel stressed from applying for all the scholarships they can, they will

normally go to a concert on campus, go to the gym to play a game or to work out, go to an a

sports game, go see a play, go to the library to study or play board games, participate in spirit

week, mess around with the seawolf mascot during an event called “Pack the Den”, go

sightseeing around the college, and go to hosted movie nights at the college. Now this might

seem like a lot to do but it is all spaced out and flyers would be posted telling you when the

event will be at and where it will be located. Some traditions at the school include; “Pack the

Den”, Big Cat Night, singing their school’s song or pledge to the school, Hungry for change,

Black history month, and many art showings or exhibits. These all combined together can make

a stressed out student feel calm and collected and get ready for the work ahead.

In the mid size school of Sonoma state, a 60:40 female to male ratio, and a staggering

293 students per teacher, Sonoma helps students feel at home but still makes them feel at

school. With this in mind, nearly 1.2 million dollars in scholarships were given out to those who

proved themselves worthy of it and 92% percent of these students were undergraduates. And

within the students, most of them were caucasian, than hispanics and then sadly most of the

rest refused to answer about their ethnicity. But with all these things in mind, would you still

apply to go to Sonoma state?