A parent's impression of San Jose State

It's 3 a.m. and your laptop breaks. What do you do?

If you're a student at San Jose State University, you head to the school library, where you can rent a laptop -- from a vending machine. At 3 a.m., or anytime.

I toured San Jose State recently with my high school junior son, who is considering attending there, It's an attractive campus spread over a flat rectangular plot in downtown San Jose. Perhaps the school has run out of room to expand laterally because this "ivory tower" literally has a lot of towers.

Many of the buildings rise up 4, 5, 6 floors and more, especially the dorms, one of which I swear looks, from the outside, like a high-rise Marriott.

The large and fairly new King library at one corner of the campus is unusual in that it is both a university and public library. For the public, it closes at 9 p.m., but for students it stays open 24 hours (all-nighter, anyone?).

Laptop vending machine

Our guide, Anna, said the library features a rotating bookshelf and a "trap door" in the elevator but unfortunately we couldn't find either when we went inside. We did, however, find the laptop vending machine on the fourth floor.

Just days before our visit, San Jose State had opened a gigantic new student recreation center that had been years in the making. I've seen three of these shiny showpieces at other campuses (Sonoma State, San Francisco State, and Cal Poly Pomona). This one was similar to the others -- climbing walls at the entrance, multiple basketball courts, lots of exercise equipment -- but on an even larger scale. It also featured a large "party pool" at the back, which was quite hopping on the hot Tuesday afternoon we were visiting.

One of the features of the new gym is that, if you forget your ID card or just don't feel like carrying it, you can use your handprint to gain entrance. That's the theory anyway. When we visited, the handprint system didn't seem to be working that well, and there was a long line of students waiting to get in.

Perhaps they should call on some engineering students for help. San Jose State has a large and well-regarded engineering school. It is unique among the majors at the college, Anna said, in that engineering students spend most of their classes together right from the start. This can make a tighter social group of friends and study partners.

Anna was a fun guide, pointing out at one point that the Central Classroom building is called that because it's, um, in the center of campus and contains classrooms. (You might think that's obvious, but at San Francisco State our guide noted that the Science Building contains almost no science classes.)

Describing why the campus's historic bell doesn't ring anymore, Anna said, "They remodeled the building -- and by 'remodeled' I mean, it burned down."

Unlike SF State -- where students are told not to bring cars to campus -- Anna said they're actually "encouraged" at San Jose State. About 7,000 of the 33,000 students live on campus. Freshmen are required to do so.

Anna mentioned that the campus does offer some partnerships with the many nearby Silicon Valley businesses -- maybe that's where the laptop vending machine came from.