Photograph by Matthew Suárez

If we take local private colleges and the ten-campus University of California system out of the equation, San Diego State sparkles. Of late, the campus’s desirability rivals most state schools in America.

Joke’s on State students

Is this title a joke (“San Diego State – an elite school,” Cover Stories, August 14)? 69,000 apply for 5,400 spots but offers of admission go to about 24,000 to make sure those 5400 spots are filled. Do you think 5400 are offered admission and all of them accept? SDSU admits about 35% not 7%. Hardly “elite.”

• Name withheld
• Poway

Brutal, toxic, meandering, embarrassed horrors

Your movie reviews are terrible. Instead of telling what the movie is about and why we should or should not go see it, most of the reviews end up with us saying “Huh?” The reviewers seem to be trying to impress us as intellectual with their big words and long complicated sentences but instead, I feel like I’m reading an episode of double talk from the Smothers Brothers show, incomprehensible with very little ability to actually communicate. Not only that, they seem to give the most stars to the movies that they themselves describe as nasty, negative, absurd, brutal, toxic, meandering, embarrassed horror, which to me seems like you should be giving them less stars, not more.

• Sue
• Santee