<ol>
<li>berkeley</li>
<li>ucla</li>
<li>ucsd</li>
<li>ucd</li>
<li>uci</li>
<li>ucsd</li>
<li>ucsc</li>
<li>cal poly slo</li>
<li>riverside</li>
</ol>
<p>10 below…</p>
<p>Why is everyone ranking Merced at the bottom! You can’t seriously think UCM is lower on the list then San Jose State for God’s sake or even Fullerton! wow, Merced is planning on building a Medical school, and also has an extremly established faculty, of course its no UCB or UCLA but still, it has a great potential and has the “Davis feel” to it.</p>
<p>MGMT123, The only reason why UC Merced is last, is because… well nothing “spectacular” has been done at UCM yet. UCM is way too young to be considered better than CSUF, San Jose State etc… which are great schools as well.</p>
<p>You said that UCM is planning on building a Medical School… well, its not built yet. “Planning” something great doesn’t mean its a great school… Look at Cal Poly, do they have a medical school? no…</p>
<p>Anyway, Rankings don’t matter. It’s just useless stuff… Go to the college where you’ll be happy!</p>
<p>Admitted stats for UC davis fall 2009 students:
3.85-4.21
ACT: 25-31
SAT CR: 550-680
SAT M: 600-720
SAT W: 560-690
Average SAT of admit: 1902.
Davis beats out UCSB in every category I think.
<a href=“http://www.ucop.edu/news/factsheets/2010/freshman_admit_profile_2010.pdf[/url]”>http://www.ucop.edu/news/factsheets/2010/freshman_admit_profile_2010.pdf</a>
Reputation wise UC davis beats UCSB because UCSB is a known party school. UC davis also has an absurd amount of research + med schools + vet school etc.
622 million spent on research for 2009 at Davis, up from 573 million before.
[Washington</a> Monthly](<a href=“http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/rankings/national_university_research.php]Washington”>http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/rankings/national_university_research.php)
With this year davis spent 573 million while santa barbara spent 174 million. With the UC systems facing cuts UCSB is likely in trouble (along with every UC but UCSD/UCD/UCLA/UCB which have a lot of research). Currently the wealth is spread around a bit, but this is not likely to continue.
Note:
UCSB endowment? 153.8 Million.
UC Davis endowment? 538.7 million.
This data coupled with the known party school reputation of UCSB makes davis a pretty clear winner in terms of academics. They’re pretty close statistically but UCSB has a bad reputation for excessive drinking/sex all the time while UC davis has a reputation for biology and research. I’m not sure how people can rank UCSB above Davis unless they rank based on the overall campus (which is fairly silly to do since it is so subjective).
Pretty clear break down:
UCB
UCLA
UCSD
UCD
UCSB/UCI
UCSC/UCR
merced
cal poly is really damn good for engineering but outside of that I’d say it is between mid-tier UC and low tier UC. If you’re going into engineering it is probably comparable to UCI/davis and maybe a bit better depending on the field. I don’t know anything about lower CSU.</p>
<p>EDIT: especially for UC, UCI and up will be pretty damn similar in terms of academics. You aren’t going to be limited at all at irvine vs cal, you’ll just be able to get a higher GPA lol. Only at schools like UCSC are you potentially limited by limited pre-med programs etc. It’s definitely going to mostly be about a different feel at the different campuses. That said you’re mostly going to be in huge lecture classes/have a similar academic experience at any of these places. It is what it is.</p>
<p>As a UCSB alum, allow me to respond to your post :)</p>
<p>-The mention of professional schools as far as undergrad education goes is an apples/oranges comparison. UCSB has and always will be dedicated to undergrads. UCSB was actually a LAC until it was converted to a research university between 1970-1980. That’s why UCSB lacks professional schools (and why it’s research budget is smaller).</p>
<p>-The party school reputation is often brought up on CC but I’ve found that most of the time this is done by people who are only applying to college and don’t have job seeking experience. I’ve had a number of jobs since graduating, and this was never an issue in my interviews, as everyone hiring understood how strong the school was academically. </p>
<p>-You mention Davis’s strong program, but you don’t mention UCSB’s powerhouse grad programs, such as physics (where it outranks every UC except Berkeley) and it’s College of Engineering.</p>
<p>PS: I really love Davis! I lived in Davis briefly and the school is great, and I defend it on this forum where people bring up reputation issues as well, such as Davis being a cow town or having nothing to do. However, I don’t think your characterization of UCSB’s social atmosphere is accurate.</p>
<p>rc251,</p>
<p>I agree with the vast majority of your post–including your analysis of UCSB’s strength in physics and engineering–(and you forgot to mention Chemistry/Biochemistry which might be UCSB’s single best program, and their very strong environmental studies program.)</p>
<p>I find that people often overrank private schools with strong graduate programs (such as Stanford and Caltech) when comparing them with public universities by not realizing that the UCs have a different goal–which is to provide undergraduate education to the large mass of high achieving California high school graduates. Accordingly, the lack of professional schools at a school like UCSB is based upon the demographic of the population to be served–as well as the demands of the other schools within the same statewide college system. There are, quite simply, more professional schools in larger, older UCs in major population areas (such as UCLA and UC Berkeley and UC San Diego) than at UCSB. UCSB would probably have more by now if: (1) Sacramento hadn’t grown so quickly–thus requiring that at least some be located in Davis, and (2) the central valley hadn’t “demanded” its own UC–and thus been allocated the UC Merced campus with its business school and so-to-be medical school.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, the fact that UCSB does lack some of these professional programs must be taken into account at least somewhat when ranking the schools. As you properly point out, UCSB has (and will continue to have) some programs that rank tops not only in the state, but also when compared with universities nationally. Even considering that, I think that UCSB’s state ranking (among UCs and CSUs) at #4 or #5 or #6 is certainly fair–and certainly not one likely to be debated very much based upon the postings on this link so far.</p>
<p>One last thing–I also lived in Santa Barbara, in Goleta, for an 8 month period during the school year back in the late 1980s and I agree entirely with you that the “party” reputation at UCSB is largely undeserved. It seems like it is almost entirely based upon one group of promotional videos put out by a particular fraternity during the 1990s aimed to garner publicity for them and the videos they were selling. It has given the school a bad “rap” it doesn’t at all deserve, and shouldn’t enter into any university ranking discussion at all IMHO.</p>
<p>P.S. For a real “party” school, check out West Virginia or Wisconsin–people at UCSB are amateurs compared to the professional partiers at those schools.</p>
<p>I thought I mentioned at the end of the post that you won’t be limited at any mid-tier UC and up and most will offer quite similar opportunities. UCSB definitely will be better for some people but I wasn’t ranking in terms of undergrad education, more of prestige/overall output. If we were talking about undergrad education I think UCSD would be lower than mid-tier UCs. When I factored in research etc. UCSD goes to #3 and UCD goes to #4. Research is a pretty decent measure of the school’s strength. </p>
<p>I haven’t been to UCSB but when my friend toured someone ran into the hall and barfed all over the ground lol. I also checked uni go.com which is where I “confirmed” the party school reputation. Granted it’s only 15 students but I felt my conclusion wasn’t necessarily against the evidence. I think UCSB was named hottest party school a while back as well. I know there are definitely studious students and students that have a work hard play hard attitude, but as a whole I’d say the party school reputation is probably accurate. Because UCSB is also strong academically you aren’t going to have issues like you might at ASU or something, but that’s because going to any UC sans merced is going to be fine for jobs. I don’t think it is a huge deal but I do think davis has a bit better reputation ( still deciding with 1 more day to go, probably won’t even go to davis, but people are always really enthused about davis when I talk to people about it). UCSB has a pretty amazing marine bio program right? All UCs are great schools (ucr/ucsc/ucm not as much but still good) and UCSB probably offers something many want: a place to de-stress at the end of the week. </p>
<p>I didn’t/don’t want to attack UCSB, I just thought it was really weird to place UCSB above UCD in terms of prestige etc. given the huge disparities on research/endowment and even with student profile davis edges them out by a bit. They’re all around the same but davis definitely seems to be rising faster than other mid-tier UC (a few years ago their stats weren’t very impressive as someone posted and had 60-70% acceptance, now it is 45% I think). </p>
<p>These schools aren’t a ranking for a specific major (I’d hate to go to cal for pre-med) but more of general research output etc. I didn’t know UCSB was more LACish than national university. In 5 years I think we’ll see a further stratification of the UC schools and where they fall will be clearer (they’re all going up at least !)</p>
<ol>
<li>Berkeley</li>
<li>LA</li>
<li>San Diego</li>
<li>Santa Barbara</li>
<li>Davis</li>
<li>SLO</li>
<li>Irvine</li>
<li>Riverside</li>
<li>San Jose State</li>
</ol>
<p>I read through UCSB’s 2025 plan, and while they want to increase the graduate population from 13% of the total student body to 17% of the student body, there’s no specific mention of new professional schools. It was noted that professional schools could be considered, but only if they could be top ranking schools should they be created.</p>
<p>As far as endowment, again, I think the lack of professionals schools (not to mention the fact that Davis has 10,000 more students) can explain the smaller endowment. I think it would be more interesting to see endowment broken down by departments rather than overall for the school. </p>
<p>And as for reputation, almost all the questionable comments about reputation I read about on CC are second hand. Like “I heard that UCSB has the highest STD rate” or “I hear there’s nothing to do in Davis”, but when you actually read these forums, you find that actual students from these forums have much different comments. For example, although I hear comments that a lot of UCSB students drop out due to partying, it’s graduation rates are about the same as the other mid-tier UC schools:</p>
<p>[College</a> graduation rates for every California school - Sacramento News - Local and Breaking Sacramento News | Sacramento Bee](<a href=“http://www.sacbee.com/2009/07/26/2057532/college-graduation-rates-for-every.html]College”>http://www.sacbee.com/2009/07/26/2057532/college-graduation-rates-for-every.html)</p>
<p>I think both of those stereotypes are fairly accurate lol. The graduation rates reflect the failure of UC system to get kids the classes they need to graduate in time imo.</p>
<ol>
<li>UCB</li>
<li>UCLA</li>
<li>UCSD</li>
<li>UC Davis</li>
<li>Cal Poly SLO</li>
<li>UCSB</li>
<li>UCI</li>
<li>UCSC</li>
<li>its all a mess after this</li>
</ol>