<p>The 2009 USNWR rankings lol. UCLA and UCB stayed the same. UCSD went up to 35 and UCD went down to 44 and is now tied with UCI and UCSB</p>
<p>Surprisingly actually USCS dropped like 17 spots and UCR went UP so now UCSC is below UCR.</p>
<p>Here's a crazy concept: go to school, be excited about what you are studying, and be happy. Who knows...that passion might show in your life after school, and, crazy concept here: maybe an over-analyzed 2-spot shift in some ridiculous ranking system won't matter quite so much.</p>
<p>^^ quote for truth</p>
<p>^^ because my parents beat me every year my college drops in the rankings to remind me I should've picked the higher ranked school.</p>
<p>in my opinion, it's generally not as important as one may make it to be. Only real problem is perhaps if a company you want to work for in the future doesn't recruit at Davis as aggressively as perhaps Berkeley or something.</p>
<p>i wouldn't worry about prestige. there are much more important factors to consider such as your grades, course of study, and work experience. those who rely too much on prestige and rankings are probably just insecure. people should find other stuff to brag about</p>
<p>most learning in college you do on your own anyways. the material your profs go through is quite limited. in the end, you really are your own teacher.</p>
<p>besides, the whole idea of getting a job is overrated to begin with. of course, it's necessary in order to get by, but who would really envy someone who has to work 40-60+ hrs per week, dealing with large burdens of stress, and possibly gaining weight? that's what you're going to have to deal with at most top of the line jobs.</p>
<p>Ranks are so stupid. the way they do it and the methodology that is involved. They try to make it fair but you and I know that things in life are never fair. Berkeley is considered the #1 public university so shouldn't it at LEAST be in the top 10 ? Rank is not important. What is important is learning, studying, grades, meeting new people, etc. </p>
<p>In 20+ years you won't care that your school dropped 2 ranks when you were attending. Those two ranks could've been splitting hairs or a difference of 0.01 points in the USNews ranks.</p>
<p>berkeley is top ten in most of its grad programs, although for undergrad it's not as great, none of the uc's are since uc's focus mostly on research, which takes place more at the graduate level.</p>
<p>be aware that many professions such as accounting and teaching could care less where you went to school. prestige will only matter if you want to do something like ibanking, law, politics, or research. most professions don't really care</p>
<p>ilikeoranges is correct. For example, the only two UC's Lockheed Martin HEAVILY recruits at are UCLA and Berkeley. This information was provided by a Lockheed hiring manager (or something like that) in the Engineering forum.</p>
<p>Also, UC Davis in my opinion is a strong school. I was considering going there; it was my second choice option after Tech. I would have preferred to go to Berkeley or UCLA over Davis, but I don't think people should look down on themselves because they're at Davis. In my opinion San Diego is a more technical school, and exceeds more at those kinds of things, while Davis is a more well-rounded school. If you're not sure what you want to study I would rather go to Davis than San Diego. There's a reason the University of California system is trying to make Davis a flagship campus. It's a well-rounded school like UCLA or Berkeley, but isn't quite up to par with them at this point. Davis is probably more prestigious than UCSB and UCI by name. Forget about the rankings, those always change every year. UC Davis is generally considered the 4th best UC, and the UC name in general is something to be proud about. California is gifted in having so many excellent public institutions. Most states only have 1 big well-rounded public school (for ex, UGA, UVA). California has like 5.</p>
<p>I'm at Georgia Tech right now and I wouldn't mind going to UC Davis for graduate school in the future. I liked the campus when I visited it, and it has a decent engineering program. I know it's Civil program is well-known at least, and it's Agricultural Engineering is in the top 5 in the nation I believe.</p>
<p>what's the difference between "heavy" recruiting and light recruiting? you mean they are willing to take more students at certain schools than from others? but then again, at the schools where they heavily recruit, wouldn't the competition be stiffer and make it harder for you to get picked, even though they're willing to take more people? so it kinda evens out in the end right?</p>
<p>and btw, i think davis actually is more prestigious than uci and sb by name, because on usnews, davis scored a 3.8 on peer assessment, while irvine and sb only got 3.5 ucsd also got 3.8</p>
<p>I can't say I can answer you completely accurately, but I think it's more like Lockheed prefers graduates from certain schools and has had good experience with them, and they have strong relations with the schools as well. A UCLA Aerospace Engineering grad with the same GPA as a UC Davis Aerospace Engineering grad probably has a better chance at scoring a job at Lockheed. I've heard Lockheed is kind of notorious for "only hiring from certain schools," so they might be a bit blown out of proportion. Of course, that doesn't mean people from other schools don't have a chance or anything. Someone with a 4.0 GPA from UCI probably has better job opportunities than a 2.5 GPA Berkeley graduate.</p>
<p>They did have a second list of (from what I recall) "second choice schools," and both UC Davis and UC San Diego were on it, but the rest of the UC's were not. I suppose this shows that companies do regard Davis as a stronger institution than UCI/UCSB, so in a way you are right that Davis is more prestigious.</p>
<p>i also would like to ask why berk/la are perceived to be better than the other uc's. sure, they may be harder to get into, but that's based on someone's performance way back in high school, how much does that even carry over into the real world? besides, colleges shouldn't be treated as homogeneous entities since at each school, there are many classes and professors, and each is unique in their own way. so i don't get why people would just generally label a school based on trivial factors such as rankings and selectivity. </p>
<p>also why do people pride themselves about going to a "prestigious" school anyways, is it because they think they will be regarded more highly when it comes time to finding a job? or is it because they were proud about doing well enough in high school to get in? or because they think they will learn the most there?</p>
<p>Selectivity and rankings are the RESULT of being prestigious....</p>
<p>The reason why Davis isn't up to par with the top Tier UC's is because they don't have as much of the well established and prestigious programs and high end awarded faculty based on research. UC Berkeley owns in Sports, Engineering, and business/econ, Math, all over the place.
UCLA owns in just about everything including a STRONGGGG alumni, sports, and it constantly gets money poured in just because of its wide variety of programs. Plus its located in Los Angeles, a nation-wide known city so it gets hype throughout the US.
UCSD is only about 50 years old and its one of the most prestigious UC's solemnly based on research and its insane science programs (pre med, bioengineering, biomedical sciences). Plus it won another Nobel prize this year, which will boost its prestige even more ... Keep in mind it doesnt even have a football team.</p>
<p>The only thing about Davis that may be holding back at UC #4 is probably because of its location... It wont attract alot of Nobel prized faculty to live in a town like Davis. </p>
<p>However, over the past years Davis has been making a giant step to improve. It became Division 1 which hopefully will make an effect, and its increasing the popularity of its best programs like Pre-Vet, Maybe some unique programs like hydrology which I found interesting when I visited the campus. Its becoming very unique.</p>
<p>but there are plenty of other top schools that are even more in the middle of nowhere than davis is, such as uiilinois, umich, dartmouth, and cornell, yet how are they able to attract top faculty despite their locations? also davis would still be the flagship school in 80% of other states right? this whole "uc tier" thing tends to overblow the differences between the uc's, imo. i mean i met this one guy from texas, and he said that he perceived texas tech to be prestigious and that is was up there with UT austin, when texas tech is actually ranked third tier and ut is in the top 50. so why do people in california make such a big deal about a difference of 20 spots between the uc's?</p>
<p>UC Davis is one of the better colleges in the nation. Even if it's overshadowed quite often by UC Berkeley being the flagship UC in the system, UC Davis is not that far behind in most national rankings, especially just counting the public ones.</p>
<p>You might not feel "special" going to UCD, but....</p>
<p>How about this, if you want to go to UCD, go there --> Study hard, find internships, do great things during your undergrad years, and when you finish, get a good job.....</p>
<p>To be honest, if youre looking to pursue graduate school, your undergrad school isn't THAT important in the long-term. And if you want to seek employment afterwards, you want to have a good academic record and good EC/experience to complement your education. You should not rely on "prestige" of a university alone.</p>
<p>omg... I should be working on my project! =/</p>
<p>"job" is a pretty general term, in terms of getting a job these days, it seems like only a few majors will help you get a job immediately, such as engineering or accounting. other top fields like medicine/health and law require even more years of school, and most positions in research require a phd in a hard science. although there are still jobs that don't look for a specific major, but a lot of them seem to fall under sales or customer service...</p>
<p>so im confused... i heard that uc irvine is on its way ahead of ucd and ucsb and even ucsd. It ranks in the top 10 of the fastest growing universities... they have some crazy plan to expand by 2015 to put them on par with ucb and ucla.</p>
<p>ive been researching LIKE CRAZY. i got accepted to both uci and ucd. i cant decide. im leaving more towards uci because of location, beach, and future growth of the uc itself. I kept on reading how the uc is trying to make davis another flagship like ucb... but i find that uci is the one next in line.... hmmmm maybe someone else knows</p>
<p>the whole nitpicking between uc's is kinda a waste of time, really. they are all already some of the best colleges in the nation, who cares if one uc requires .4 points of gpa higher to get in or is ranked 15-20 places higher in some magazine, in the end they all provide pretty much the same opportunities. the higher uc's may have more companies that recruit at their career fairs and they may have stronger alumni networks, but even those things won't help you if you don't make the right decisions towards making yourself marketable.</p>
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so im confused... i heard that uc irvine is on its way ahead of ucd and ucsb and even ucsd. It ranks in the top 10 of the fastest growing universities... they have some crazy plan to expand by 2015 to put them on par with ucb and ucla.
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<p>This is propaganda for attracting prospective students. I've been hearing about UC Davis trying to become the next UC flagship campus for quite some time now and nothing has really happened. I don't expect UC Irvine to deliver either.</p>