<p>anyone who cares about prestige is not worth your time. </p>
<p>i think its ridiculous. ignore them!!</p>
<p>i was in the exact same position as you, jasonlee576. i got into berkeley and cal and submitted my SIR for SD a few weeks ago. I even got a $10,000 scholarship to USC and turned it down. my parents still look at me funny.</p>
<p>how people perceived me used to bother me a little… but honestly the people who care about you are still going to respect your decision even if it’s not what they would have done and if people don’t want to support your decision, you might start to wonder how much they care about your genuine happiness. </p>
<p>and it’s not like by graduating from SD any of us will be any worse off than cal or la students. i honestly don’t think so. if you were hardworking enough to get into those schools then you will continue to be hardworking enough at sd to get into the prestigious grad schools or get the prestigious jobs that cal or la students might get… and that’s really all that the prestige of cal or la means in the end anyway.</p>
<p>in the end, you’re spending four years of your life somewhere, making some of the most lasting memories you’ll have. you need to spend those four years somewhere that you know will make you happy, not somewhere you only went for name recognition. if berkeley or la make you happy, then go for it. but i knew they wouldn’t make me near as happy as sd so i’m not looking back with any regrets at all.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.ucop.edu/news/factsheets/2008/fall+2008+app_table+10+bar+charts.pdf[/url]”>http://www.ucop.edu/news/factsheets/2008/fall+2008+app_table+10+bar+charts.pdf</a></p>
<p>GPA AVE
Berkeley 3.81
UCLA 3.77
UCSD 3.75
UW 3.66</p>
<p>SAT 1 AVE
Berkeley 1819
UCLA 1778
UCSD 1787
UW 1723</p>
<p>“i got into berkeley and cal and submitted my SIR for SD a few weeks ago”</p>
<p>um, berkeley = cal</p>
<p>Kelly94555,
i believe those are applicant averages, not admit. at least thats what the title of the UC factsheet link you posted says. just a heads up you may have read or written it wrong.</p>
<p>i just met a girl who got into harvard, stanford, cal, and ucla. shes going to attend UCSD next fall.</p>
<p>one of my suitemates got into Caltech, Stanford, Cal, etc. (2270 SAT, 4.6 WGPA, 5 x 800 SAT II, 14 x 5 AP and one 3!!!) you can tell he’s incredibly intelligent. in my humanities class discussion, he constantly argues with the TA (whose title is “Dr.”) and never fails to point out any instant in which the TA says something incorrect. it’s almost as if my suitemate is more intelligent than the TA. however, he’s doing pretty badly in terms of his GPA because all he does is play Starcraft, which i lent to him =]]]]=DDD^_^</p>
<p>haha sorry hotelmoscow, berkeley and LA</p>
<p>i’m also going to probably turn down Cal and LA for SD after visiting the campus today. you can always tell people that you got into Cal but prefer SD for ___ reason. UCSD is a great school and i hope Berkeley’s april 12 open house won’t change my mind about going to SD</p>
<p>and regarding the above posts, i know a guy at my school who got into harvard and stanford but rejected from UCLA. this year’s admissions is really unusual</p>
<p>ive feel like sd has been unrecognized…but if you look at ucla or cal… way back in the day they werent recognized either…but now all the alumni are like wow look at it now…</p>
<p>and i think the same thing will happen at sd… right now it might not be recognized but in a couple of years the rankings of ucsd will go up
im sure</p>
<p>do you think it’s possible that SD will be ranked higher than LA or perhaps Cal one day?</p>
<p>honestly, not in the foreseeable future. </p>
<p>they’ve both been excellent schools for a long time now, and each passing year only adds on an additional layer of prestige for that “name game” show. consider the ivies – sure, they’re excellent schools, but it’s been hard for any other school to get the same amount of attention just because they haven’t been around as long.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t say higher, but probably the same. It’s reputation is rising very fast, and it’s already considered to be about as good as Cal/UCLA (at least at my school).</p>
<p>It’s because UCSD doesn’t have a D-I football team :D</p>
<p>^ UCSD is not really well rounded enough in sports and academics (and very weak in many areas outside of sciences) to rise to the level of LA and Cal.</p>
<p>lol i’m really getting annoyed of these uneducated posts that say that ucsd is “weak” outside of sciences. can you give me an example of these “areas”? ucsd beats ucla as well as cal in many of these areas.</p>
<p>deonman – your turn to shine. 
which areas are you talking about?</p>
<p>(i have many reasons for UCSD >> the others, but i don’t need to convince anyone why UCSD was the best for me)</p>
<p>well from what i’ve seen, ucsd beats LA in poli sci as well as econ, and berkley in international relations, international affairs, econometrics and comparative politics. UCSD also has an excellent theater department. granted that there are many places where LA and cal beat SD, to say that SD is weak outside everything else is simply unfair.</p>
<p>in response to Jmilton90’s post:</p>
<p>I’m sorry, but I just can’t let that slide. I’ll agree that UCSD is not impressive when it comes to sports. We have some decent division II teams, but nothing that receives any real recognition. however, to say that UCSD has lackluster programs outside of the hard sciences is simply not true and any amount of research into UCSD’s other programs would reveal many of our fine arts, humanities, and social sciences to be among the best in the nation. Obviously, I don’t have the time to go through all of our majors and their respective rankings and reputations. I’ll just give you a general idea. </p>
<p>In political science, US news ranks UCSD 7th in the nation behind Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, Michigan, Yale, and Princeton</p>
<p>In 2000, UCSD’s Department of Theater and Dance was ranked 3rd in the nation and it has only gotten better since. </p>
<p>In the History subfields of European History, the History of Science, and United States History, History of the Modern Middle East and Africa UCSD ranks in the top 10.</p>
<p>From what i’ve heard from my music professors, UCSD has one of, if not THE most competitive contemporary music program in the nation. </p>
<p>UCSD is ranked 9th in the nation for its visual arts department.</p>
<p>I am an anthropology major and know that it is has made and is making amazing discoveries in the Levant, Mesopotamia, Central/South America, and Anatolia. Not to mention Middle Eastern archeology giant, Guillermo Algaze, on staff. </p>
<p>So, that’s just a small example of our programs that fall outside the sphere of hard science (with the arguable exception of anthropology). Along with that, UCSD is the founding campus of Cognitive Science, which aided in the development of its neuroscience program, which is the top neuroscience program in the nation. UCSD holds a leading spot among the nation’s biology programs, UCSD has one of the best computer science and mathematics departments in the nation, has a top-10 ranked Oceanography institute yadda, yadda, yadda. The point is, UCSD did not get to where it is today simply by focusing on hard sciences and neglecting humanities and social sciences. Anybody on this forum should know better than to assume a school can be ranked 38th best school in the nation and have such a narrow focus on hard sciences. It simply doesn’t work that way. UCSD is a very well rounded school, though many people may not perceive it that way due to a small athletics program. </p>
<p>With regards to UCSD’s future recognition as compared to UCLA or Cal, it’s unimportant. I don’t think UCSD will ever match either school’s reputation at any point in time, but I do foresee UCSD’s future reputation being equal to, and eventually surpassing, UCLA and Cal’s reputation right now. The fact of the matter is that not just anybody gets into UCSD. It’s a widely respected campus in a WIDE range of fields. With regards to the job market, each employer will know if you went to a school with a good program for the respective job title. Name recognition is really a little ridiculous at this point in the game. The UC system is already widely regarded as one of the best multi-campus systems in the world, and to be enrolled in UCSD, which is often regarded as one of the top 3 UC campuses, is quite impressive. </p>
<p>I used to think the same about UCSD, but after two years of being here, I am continually floored with the wide range of “academic superstars” in so many fields – not to mention all the academic hopefuls receiving their undergrad, grad, or P.hD degrees. I think people would be pleasantly surprised with how often you can run into these academic celebrities and bask in their infinite wisdom while you eat a subway sandwich between class. It’s a nice place to be.</p>