<p>It's tough to have a great reputation in CA when you have schools like Stanford, Cal Tech, Berkeley, and UCLA in your backyard as well as Pomona and the other UC schools.</p>
<p>In Washington, UW is virtually unopposed.</p>
<p>And to the poster who said that UW has "much more prestige", can you please tell me why?</p>
<p>80 NAS members, $700 million research budget, 7 million volume library. PAC 10</p>
<p>Prestige is, of course, very subjective. I'm from California though and I would be far more impressed with someone going to UW then to UCI. They are both great school, but UW being older and more "established" is more impressive.</p>
<p>UW also is the most widely funded research university - second to Johns Hopkins University.</p>
<p>I don't know much about UCI except what I have heard of it's reputation and seen thru rankings. We did live in LA for 15 years, so I'm somewhat familiar with the area, though have never been on campus. My oldest 2 both went to the UW and had extraordinary experiences (comp. sci and accting). The school had everything they wanted--great location near a hip and student-friendly city, beautiful campus, great diversity of people, active community, great sports programs, and challenging academics. Both kids thrived--in and out of the classroom. S did serious undergrad research with professor he admired greatly. D got involved in everything...but she's the type. Kids have hardly come home--they found part time jobs thru school and had multiple job offers afterwards. (yes, I count my blessings!) NW people are great.
And now my youngest D faces a dilemna similar to yours. She has been accepted at UCLA-honors and UCSB- Regents along with UW-no $$. It is not an easy decision. If we didn't have the recent good history with UDub, staying in-state at a UC would be a lot easier. Good luck. Cost differences are certainly substantial.</p>