<p>Here is an accurate list of the top public California University rankings for overall academics and quality & diversity of programs offered</p>
<ol>
<li>Berkeley</li>
<li>UCLA</li>
<li>UCSD</li>
<li>CAL POLY SLO</li>
<li>UC DAVIS</li>
<li>CAL POLY POMONA</li>
<li>SDSU</li>
<li>UC SANTA BARBARA</li>
<li>UC SANTA CRUZ This university offers around 60 undergrad majors, which pale compared to other schools</li>
<li>UC IRVINE This university doesn't offer a lot of undergraduate majors, as compared to the schools above it</li>
</ol>
<p>A few other schools worth noting Sonoma St, Cal St LA, Long Beach St, Cal St Fullerton and SFSU</p>
<p>The schools on the bottom end of this list would be UC Riverside, Cal St Dominguez hills, Cal St Monterey, Fresno St, UC Merced, Cal State East Bay and Cal St Bakersfield</p>
<p>I currently attend UCLA although I applied to both Cal Poly's and USC in high school, Just UCLA gave me more scholarship money although I was hoping Cal Poly would have offered more, phenomenal school.
If you were like myself coming out of high school and were still undecided about your major field of study, here is an accurate list of our states best public universities overall that offer a wide array of quality programs. Sure some schools may have a certain field slightly better than another, but overall these schools share the same academic reputations for forbes, us news and world report and other like rankings.</p>
<p>So where’s the list? What’s the basis for your ranking? What makes you think it is any more “accurate” than what already has been published by services such as stateuniversity.com (assuming that isn’t your source)?</p>
<p>To address your topic question, assuming “not a lot of money” means low income, you really should include some private colleges, too. A low income, high stats student may well have a lower net cost (after aid) to attend one of the Claremont Colleges (Pomona etc) or Stanford than to attend Berkeley or UCLA.</p>
<p>From what I have heard discussed among the high schoolers who are friends with my high school senior, the California Community Colleges are where many of them head if they are unsure of their major and don’t have much money to spend on their college education.</p>
<p>I had been under the impression that Cal Poly (and perhaps other publics as well?) required students to apply directly into particular majors, and that the process of changing majors could be difficult or impossible. That was one of the many reasons I decided to forego applying to the CSUs and UCs in favor of private liberal arts colleges, of which there are many in California.</p>
<p>Agree with Buckeye that the community college system is a great option for undecided CA students.</p>
<p>The CSUs have frosh applicants apply to majors. The UCs vary by campus and division (though campuses divided into divisions often require applicants to apply to a division – e.g. College of Letters and Science vs. College of Engineering).</p>
<p>Changing major may or may not be difficult, depending on if the destination major is at full capacity (“impacted”). All majors are impacted at CPSLO, but many other CSUs are only impacted for a few popular majors like nursing.</p>
<p>All majors are impacted at Both Cal Polys, and its for incoming freshmen and transfer students that are upper transfers. I applied to USC, although my parents are divorced, and my dad makes plenty of money. He will not be helping me with tuition costs, and that is the reason I listed these outstanding public universities whose tuition is much less than 99% of private schools. </p>
<p>And “tk21769”; Not alot of money means even though my dad makes plenty of money, he’s not helping me with tuition at all. So this is for students that don’t have alot of money themselves or money in the bank they have access to. My family is not considered low income, it’s my situatiuon, don’t assume!!! I base this on having to take out student loans or getting academic scholarships, since I’m not getting an athletic scholarship ever. </p>
<p>And if you check various college rankings, us news and world report, forbes, college prowler, businessweek, etc, and these rankings are the avg of all these lists. Im not listing for any specific program like engineering, just overall educational institutions. I’ve never had to change my major at UCLA, but I know you are allowed to continue on with an undeclared major here your freshman year no problem. </p>
<p>And these rankings are for people in my sitaution, I never mentioned these rankings are for people who’s parents are unemployed, or who are a minority. These are very accurrate overall state of california public affordable college rankings</p>
<p>California public universities use FAFSA only, and generally give good in-state financial aid, which works in your favor if your non-custodial parent makes a lot of money but will not contribute to your college costs (or even cooperate with CSS/Profile financial aid forms needed by many other private and public schools).</p>
<p>Yes I applied for Fafsa. Although I am getting a few scholarships for school, I received no grants. the only aid for me were loans. Luckily I did get the scholarships</p>
<p>Sure you could say UCSB is better than SDSU, thats fine and I’m sure most people are fine with that. I’m merely listing the top 10 public universities that are the best academically in California</p>
<p>For the other schools, varying percentages of majors are impacted, and they are not necessarily the same ones at each school. So an undecided student needs to consider the realm of possible majors that s/he may consider to determine if there will be considerable difficulty declaring or changing major after enrollment.</p>
<p>^^^Agreed ucbalumnus. Cal Poly SLO is not a school to find yourself. It is really geared towards those that have a good idea of what they want to do in life and commit to a course of action. It is fairly easy in the initial years to change majors within a college (for example from General Engineering to Mechanical Engineering) and there is even a pathway to change majors between colleges such as Engineering and Business. However, It is not recommended to try to apply to Cal Poly SLO undecided. I can’t imagine that going over too well.</p>
<p>If you are looking to schools that will give you more leeway to decide what you want to do, I suggest a UC or a private.</p>