San Jose State University makes massive jump in new college rankings

Stanford and UC Berkeley get a lot of attention, but one of the Bay Area's top college has largely flown under the radar until this year.

The Wall Street Journal recently ranked San Jose State University fourth on its list of top public universities in the country and 16th overall. The university ranked much lower on last year's list at 173.

It takes more than top-notch academics for a school to get a high ranking from the Wall Street Journal's top 500 colleges and universities list. Affordability and employability count a lot. Those factors boosted San Jose State to take 16th place on this year's list, behind Stanford in third and UC Berkeley at eighth. While Santa Clara University scored 38th on the list that was released earlier this month.

“We've seen some really good strides in actually employability of our students and salaries in the last few years,” said Vincent Del Casino, SJSU’s provost and senior vice president for academic affairs. “Plus, the fact that we've kept the overall cost of education down for our students.”

The average net price of a four-year degree from San Jose State is under $15,000 per year, according to the Wall Street Journal. The paper also found it takes graduates about a year and three months to pay off, according to data based on graduate salaries.

“The big companies, Apple, Google, Nvidea, Kaiser, the county, the city, more often than not we have well over 1,000 alumni in those organizations,” Del Casino said.

The school's computer science program, which recently added tracks in linguistics and geology, are among the more competitive programs to get into, according to the provost, drawing students from out of state and across the globe.

Yassine Djeddi, a transfer student from Algeria, studies computer science. He said he had other options when deciding on where to go to college and San Jose State made the most sense for his academic interests and career goals.

“They provide anything you need like a resource for study, material, finance and anything, even they help with internships, and that's my goal,” he said.