How good are the UC school academically?

JeSuis
Mon, 09 Jul 2012 13:55:09 +0000

And to actually answer flyrun’s questions:

If you’re going to be paying out-of-state tuition, I personally would recommend applying to private schools. The UCs are continuously making budget cuts, class sizes are getting larger and more impersonal while tuition increases (I don’t know if tuition is increasing for OOS students, though.) In my experience, professors either blatantly don’t care about undergraduates, or they have so many students that it doesn’t matter how much they care. Every time I go to office hours I’m fighting with other students to get my questions answered. Many private schools will offer you more financial aid and a much better undergraduate education. You could apply to USC, Occidental, the Claremont McKenna Colleges, just to name a few. Again, this is just my opinion based on my experience at one UC. Don’t get me wrong, I love my school and have no intentions of transferring, but the undergraduate education simply isn’t very good.

As far as being party schools, UCSB is known to be a party schools (mostly because the off campus housing is so concentrated in one area.) A lot of people party at UC Davis, but most people seem to balance it well with academics, and the partying is pretty easy to avoid if it’s not your thing. I have no idea about the other UCs, but I think the partying would be about the same as Davis, if not less.