I was recently accepted from the waitlist at UCSB and have found myself in a bit of a pickle. I’ve visited both schools and am enamored of both in equal measure. I am undecided L&S at UCSB and a philosophy major at cal poly.
Cost of each?
Which college’s philosophy course offerings look more interesting to you? How about other subjects of interest?
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Had you gotten into UCSB up front - where would you have gone? Most could answer this - but then it changed when you assumed you were not getting in.
You’re majoring in philosophy - pick the cheapest or the one you had the best feel at.
Curious - why are you not philosophy at ucsb?
it’s a major - doesn’t matter where you go.
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Take a look at how difficult it is to change majors at SLO if you end up wanting not to major in philosophy – and also at what other majors they offer and their depth and breadth. Lots of students change majors, and SLO may not have an option that you like – or that you could get into, because for SLO it is apparently difficult to change majors – and then you would be stuck.
Do the same for UCSB – but my guess is that you would have a lot more options there.
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I recently read Annie Duke’s book “How to Decide”. She is a former professional poker player accustomed to making big decisions on incomplete data.
One of the points she makes in the book that seems relevant to you is that tough decisions are actually easy. Meaning that when choosing between two great choices one can lose sight that they both are, in fact, great choices. See an interview about this at Practical Tools for Better Decisions: A Q&A with Annie Duke on How to Decide - By Dave Nussbaum - Behavioral Scientist
It’s easy to fall into the rabbit hole of looking for finer and finer distinctions in hopes they’ll lead to a clear decision. You’ll want to go downtown; how frequent are the buses downtown from campus at UCSB and Cal Poly? You should exercise; what’s the equipment at the Rec center? It would be easy to come up with a dozen more differences to look into in hopes a clear winner emerges.
The truth, IMHO, is that there is no clear “better” choice between these two. If you don’t have a gut feeling that one is better for you, and you say you don’t, then just pick one and be done with it. Your satisfaction is more likely to be impacted by chance events (who you get as roommates, who you get for profs, who you end up dating, etc) than any distinction you try to draw between these two schools a priori. I’d vote for UCSB, but that’s because I went there. Cal Poly alums are equally supportive of their school.
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Agree with your analysis. We visited both these campuses over spring break along with a couple of others for D21. She ended up picking one of the other campuses but loved both UCSB and CalPoly. My advise to the OP is to make a choice and don’t second guess it. Good luck OP, and I feel confident that any one of your two choices will provide you with an excellent undergraduate education.
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I appreciate the thoughtful response. It has gotten to the point where I am nitpicking minute differences between the schools in hopes of determining which of the two great schools is slightly greater (for me). I’m revisiting both schools in the coming days which should freshly influence my decision as my perceptions of both have blurred with time.