I am from California, and in my college we have what we call TAG (Transfer Acceptance Guarantee) two all three lower level UCs as well as all three Mid-Tier UCs. These are UCI, UCSB, and UCD. By meeting the requirements that each of these universities presents to you, you are allowed to transfer to them and have a guaranteed acceptance response from them. The catch is, however, that you can only apply to one of them. Naturally, with a UC school, they all cost about the same and the only difference between them is their perceived quality, so, of course, one will want a guaranteed transfer to the best one of them.
Given this, here is more about me. I am a student of political science and international relations. Given this, which school do you think is best for that major and why? Also, don’t just include school rankings. If you have personal experience with the area and the style of the university and all of that please include it as well as I want to take all into consideration when making my decision. I suppose that I am technically asking which you like more and why.
I’d suggest that you visit the website for the poli sci / IR department for each campus and do some research:
1> See what is required for the majors – I think you will find some differences at each campus as to how the majors are structured and what is required.
2> Explore what courses are offered-- there can be significant variations in course offerings, particularly at the upper division level.
3> Look up the names of faculty and try to learn something about them to get a sense of what their interests or focus might be. Very often there will be a list of their publications or projects on a faculty bio page on the college website; Google might be a source of more information.
It’s not a matter of which is “best” – it’s which is going to offer you the program that is best suited for your particular interests and goals. Also, as TAG student, you will want to see how your CC coursework fits within the major requirements at each college.
Also, learning more about the requirements at each campus might help you with course choice at your CC. You don’t want to arrive on campus as a junior only to learn that you still need to pick up some basic introductory courses that were available to you at your CC, but you didn’t know you would need.
I am assuming you are in SoCal? If so, I think it would be very worth your while to do a road trip. You could do it in two days, UCSD and UCI are 1.5 hours apart, UCSB 3 hours from UCI. Call them up and see if you can have them find a student give you a tour of the department. You will probably know what school feels right for you once you do that.
It’s fascinating how people have such a strong affinity for anecdotes. It’s not just you, it’s how we are built. Every speaker starts with an anecdote, opinion pieces start with a vivid example of the problem at hand to drag you in, etc.
If you could find a place where randomly selected students submitted stories then you wouldn’t have to read too many to get a decent flavor of the place. The problem is that on this forum you aren’t likely to get many replies (few current students hang out in xfer forums) so one or two replies can give a skewed view. You may miss out on a great fit, or go to one that is not so good for you, based on the stories of one or two other kids.
I suggest you look at student surveys to see what a better sampling of students say. Just about every college does these. Spend a few minutes searching for terms like “student satisfaction survey ”. Doing this I quickly found one example link: http://www.oir.uci.edu/analyses-reports.html that has many pages of questions on “Educational Assessment” and “Undergrad Experience at UCI”
education/quality/opportunity are probably a wash for most majors. The campus and student experience, however will be very different. Visit the schools, talk to some students and visualize yourself there for 2-3 years. Pick the one you think will suit you best.
UC Davis is great for internships in Downtown Sacramento (Capital) as @“aunt bea” has said but it also has a great campus feel. The undergrads are happy, playful and yes studious. The campus is safe and bike/walk friendly. Political Science majors have a lot of opportunity there because of the close proximity to Sacramento’s state government