<p>each of the three main UCs: UCB, UCLA, and UCSD, were all started roughly 40-50 years apart at (rougly) 1870, 1920, and 1960 (respectively) UCLA has caught up significantly to berkeley in rakings (however berkeley still has way more top PHD programs), but UCSD is up and coming as well (has more nobel laureates than UCLA iirc)</p>
<p>it’ll be interesting how the schools are affected by the budget cuts. I’ve only been seeing how UCLA is being affected, but i wonder how hard UCSD is going to be affected (especially since its endowment is significantly lower) and how this, in turn, will impact the universities future progress.</p>
<p>i don’t know how fair it is to say that the only reason people apply to the socal UC schools is purely for this ‘fun-in-the-sun’ type of mentality. it seems rather unlikely that someone would be questioned for going to UCLA over UCB in any instance, other than the few majors where berkeley excels significantly over UCLA (e.g. economics, CS, engineering, etc.)</p>