<p>I very much doubt that overall you will find SB an intellectual place.</p>
<p>LOL. UCSB is one of the top research institutes in this country. There seems to be a disbelief that students can be having so much fun while excelling academically, but as schools like UWisconsin and UCSB show, this is entirely possible. The reason UCSB gets the reputation that it does is because it’s a residential college with many kids living together. Instead of other UCs were kids drive home on the weekends to their parents, kids at UCSB spend their time off socializing and unwinding from working very hard during the week. Of course, it may not be to the level that Berkeley is, but it definitely won’t be absent from UCSB, especially if you are in the honors college or College of Creative Studies. I’m a firm believer that happy kids do better academically too, and most UCSB students are very happy (UCSB has the highest alumni giving rate, 19%, in all the UC system - in fact 5% higher than the next highest, UCLA).</p>
<p>And it is more white than the other UCs and is very middle class.</p>
<p>I ran a StatFinder for the entering class of Fall 2008 and added income level as a variable. Here are the stats I got (they don’t add up to 100% because some students had a no response)</p>
<p>UCSB</p>
<p>less than $40,000: 24.0%
$40,000-$79,000: 17.8%
$80,000-$119,000: 12.1%
$120,000 or more: 23.8%</p>
<p>Berkeley: </p>
<p>less than $40,000: 19.9%
$40,000-$79,000: 22.5%
$80,000-$119,000: 12.3%
$120,000 or more: 24.4%</p>
<p>You can run your own query but UCSB has one of the highest percentages of lower income students. You can see that there are more wealthy people at Berkeley, for example.</p>
<p>In terms of ethnicity, this may surprise you but the Fall 2009 class of UCSB has the [url=<a href=“http://www.ucop.edu/news/factsheets/2009/froshsirs_table3.pdf]3rd”>http://www.ucop.edu/news/factsheets/2009/froshsirs_table3.pdf]3rd</a> highest rate of underrepresented minorities in the entire UC system<a href=“after%20Riverside%20and%20Merced”>/url</a> at 30%. The ethnic breakdown of the class goes like this:</p>
<p>White: 44.7%
Hispanic: 24.9%
Asian: 20.7%
Black: 4.0%</p>
<p>I think that’s one of the most balanced and diverse makeup of any of the UCs. UCSB has the 3rd highest Hispanic population among the UCs, 4th highest Black population, etc. I’m not sure why people always throw out this incorrect anecdotal evidence about the school but I want to make the facts clear.
Black: 4.0%</p>