I have gotten into both UCSC and Cal Poly SLO with a major in anthropology with a , the major I decided I wanted all the way back in the third grade. My parents want me to go to UCSC, but I am really torn because I have a lot of people telling me Cal Poly is the better school of the two. Any advice?
Congrat! They are both excellent, you should attend the one that speaks to you. Don’t worry about what anyone else thinks about which is ‘better’. You will perform best where you are most comfortable. How you perform and what you do in school is WAY more important than the name on your diploma.
Good luck.
Cal Poly is a great school, but their greatest strengths are in applied technical like engineering, business, architecture, and agriculture. They appear to have a single combined “Social Sciences” department which combines anthropology with geography and sociology. This department appears to include:
- 4 tenure-track professors in anthropology or archeology (including the department chair)
- 1 lecturer
https://socialsciences.calpoly.edu/faculty
College Navigator doesn’t break out the number of anthropology degrees issued by Cal Poly, which implies that the number is relatively low. They do show 40 bachelor’s degrees issued in the “Social Sciences, Other” category for 2016-17. The anthropology degrees are presumably a portion of that, along with sociology, geography, etc.
For comparison, UCSC has a standalone anthropology department with:
- 13 tenure-track professors in cultural anthropology
- 3 tenure-track professors in biological anthropology
- 5 tenure-track professors in archeology
- 5 lecturers
- 11 emeritus faculty
https://anthro.ucsc.edu/faculty/academic-personnel/index.php
https://anthro.ucsc.edu/faculty/academic-personnel/emeriti.php
https://anthro.ucsc.edu/faculty/academic-personnel/lecturers.php
College Navigator shows that UCSC issued 148 bachelor’s, 7 master’s, and 3 doctoral degrees in anthropology for 2016-17. Anthropology appears to be one of the most popular undergraduate majors.
So in terms of anthropology specifically, you are looking at apples and oranges here. At Cal Poly, anthropology is a relatively small program with only a handful of faculty and apparently a low number of students. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but you should check the Cal Poly catalog to make sure that they have courses that cover your areas of interest, because the selection is likely to be limited. At UCSC, in contrast, anthropology appears to be one of the most popular majors on campus, and the department is relatively large. You’ll probably find that the UCSC catalog has far more anthropology course options than the Cal Poly catalog.