Hello! Applications are sent in and now all that I can think about is the decision I have to make. I TAG’d to UC Davis for Computer Science and it got accepted. However, I might decide on one of the other UC’s I applied to instead (UC Irvine, UCLA, UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara). In my opinion, I would rank, from best to worst, the Computer Science programs as follows: UCLA, UCSB, UCSD, UCI, UCD, but I was wondering what others thought.
Btw I have a 3.69 Non-GE GPA.
https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/infocenter/transfers-major can give you an idea of your likelihood of admission.
The best one is one that (a) admits you, (b) is affordable, and (c) where you have reasonable coverage of the lower division course work so that you have to spend fewer quarters taking “catch up” courses (see the ASSIST pages or equivalent).
Personally I think you cannot go wrong with any of the schools on your list for CS. All will give you an excellent education so pick the school that meets the criteria listed by @ucbalumnus. Remember fit is just as important as the academics.
UCB, UCLA, UCSB, UCSD then they are all about the same from here.
If you want to work in consulting or on Wall Street the recruiting is probably best at Cal and UCLA. But for normal CS jobs any of these is fine. The real difference in your future is going to be what you do, not the school you do it at. Do well in class, get an internship after junior year (hopefully you are lining one up for this summer after your soph year), and you will be well positioned.
To answer your question directly as stated in the header, UC-Berkeley is one of the Big Four of CS (along with Stanford, CMU and MIT). UCLA and perhaps UCSD is in the 2nd tier in the top 20 or so. UCI, UCSB and UCD are in that third tier all in the top 40. All are good choices, you can’t go wrong with any of them.
depending who is doing the rankings, some will add Cal Tech, Univ. of Illinois, Georgia Tech, Univ. of Washingtion, or some Ivies such as Cornell, Princeton. They all have top notch computer science programs.
The original question was for UC’s, but I added a few from around the country since there was mentioning of others outside the UC’s.
UC Irvine and UC Davis are definitely not on the same level as UC Riverside and UC Merced.
Opinion from a father of a CS student and someone who hires software developers/engineers. I think your rankings are right on. UCLA and UCB are tier 1a, with UCSB and UCSD being tier 1b. All four really good and one or the other wouldn’t impact my hiring decision. UCD and UCI are 2nd tier and if you have the choice it really comes down to the student life, location coursework you prefer. UCD and UCI do have different graduation requirements so your prior coursework may help dictate this also if you have an interest in a specialization, for example, UCI might be better for Game Development. I wouldn’t recommend choosing between UCI and UCD based on ranking.