<p>I was accepted to both colleges: the honors program at UCSB and I will probably get into the honors program at SCU.</p>
<p>I'm just not sure which one to choose (money is not an issue), and want to hear others' take on the two schools. For instance, which one has better academics, better teachers, more school pride, better college town and college life? Personal experience???
Anything is helpful, especially what I can't get from the websites. </p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>You are comparing apples and oranges. One is a giant public UC, the other a small/mid-sized private university.</p>
<p>I don’t think academics slack at either school, but at SCU all of the classes tend to run under 30 students, often 15 and less for upper-division classes. Many of my daughter’s classes this year as a junior had 15 or fewer students, lending to a seminar-styled teaching. Classes are taught only by professors (never a TA/graduate student) and there is no such thing as a auditorium-class of 100-400+ students packed into a lecture hall. </p>
<p>I also tend to believe that professors at both colleges are going to be good. You are better off asking about specific department and majors because the departments at ANY college will have strong and weak offerings.</p>
<p>Again, what does “college life” mean to you? SCU is an intimate campus and while there is no football team, sports events are still rather huge on campus (especially men’s basketball).</p>
<p>Have you visited both campuses? Often students find that a particular campus just “feels” right–something that can’t be determined via websites OR asking people on online forums.</p>
<p>I know someone who got into both UCSB and other UCs…and SCU. He fell in love with UCSB, which he toured first. But he realized how much he was just a “number” at a University with 19,000 students (frosh class of 3,700 students) vs 5,000 total (frosh class of 1,200). Note that while comparing frosh classes of 3.7K students vs 1.2K students both still sound like a LOT of students, that SCU has a giant support staff and gives a lot of individual attention that just can’t be duplicated at the UC level.</p>
<p>(He chose SCU and loves it.)</p>