San Francisco State University Paper Format & Writing Requirements

San Francisco State University at a glance

A Hispanic-Serving urban campus famous for founding the nation's first College of Ethnic Studies after the 1968 student strike, its Poetry Center's decades of archived readings and a Cinema department with Bay Area industry ties.

The campus sits in San Francisco, California, operates as a public institution, and enrolls about 27,000 students — a scale that directly shapes how writing support works. Founded in 1899 with an acceptance rate around 91%, SF State pairs selective admissions with the large-course writing loads typical of its category.

Citation styles San Francisco State University actually requires

SF State courses predominantly require APA 7 or MLA 9 or Chicago or AP. That is not a trivial preference: it decides your title page, heading levels, in-text punctuation and reference format on every graded document.

• APA 7: used across social science, nursing and business courses
• MLA 9: used across humanities and writing-sequence courses
• Chicago: used across history, fine arts and some social science seminars
• AP: used across the university's signature programs

Verify against the specific course syllabus anyway — instructors can override departmental defaults, and the first paper is where they enforce it.

The writing requirement, decoded

ENG 114 covers first-year composition, and the CSU's GWAR rule requires an upper-division writing course coded to the major; the Writing Center keeps multilingual-friendly appointments, and Journalism sections enforce AP style on every file.

Plan the sequence early: composition requirements compound, and students who defer them discover the advanced seminars — where the writing-intensity lives — conflict with major courses later. The registrar's degree audit shows exactly which flags remain; check it each semester.

Three things about San Francisco State University papers that surprise new students

• The College of Ethnic Studies — the first in the country, born from the 1968 Third World Liberation Front strike — assigns papers built from the university archive's own fliers and meeting minutes.
• The Poetry Center has recorded nearly every reading since 1954, and writing seminars sometimes assign introductions drafted from the American Poetry Archives tapes.
• SF State ran iLearn, its own Moodle build, for more than a decade before moving to Canvas around 2020 — old iLearn links still circulate in advising guides.

None of these appear in the course description. All of them appear in the rubric. Students who learn them in week one report smoother first-semesters than students who meet them at the deadline.

Assignments San Francisco State University students face most

• Essay — most frequently assigned across SF State's programs
• Research Paper — most frequently assigned across SF State's programs
• Literature Review — most frequently assigned across SF State's programs
• Coursework — most frequently assigned across SF State's programs

Popular programs at SF State include cinema, journalism, business administration — each pairs the assignment list above with its own capstone or practicum expectations, detailed on our subject pages.