Like mechanical/aerospace engineering.
Does SB’s engineering program stand up to the others?
The weather and scenery swamps at SB any difference in the academics. :-*
As far as mechanical engineering goes, I would say Irvine and Davis are fairly even with SB a bit behind (but not too far). The environments at all the schools are so different, and as all three have solid programs, I would choose based on which environment suits you
Here is a great site to check out: http://profiles.asee.org/. It’s basically the Common Data Set for just the engineering portion of all the participating schools. All of the UCs save Merced are included. The data are from 2014. It includes numbers of students in each year by major, acceptance information, number of faculty in each major, research dollars in each department, etc.
Some takeaways- UCSB doesn’t have Aerospace, the others do. UCSB MechE has much smaller enrollment than the other two. And overall the engineering school at UCSB is about 1/3 the size of the others. Maybe you’ll feel less like a number, but perhaps fewer options for concentration? And finally, UCSB has a lower acceptance rate than the other two (21% vs 33% UCI and 36% UCD). The acceptance data is for the engineering school as a whole for 2014.
And agree with others that it’s more about fit than anything else.