<p>rc251,</p>
<p>I agree with the vast majority of your post–including your analysis of UCSB’s strength in physics and engineering–(and you forgot to mention Chemistry/Biochemistry which might be UCSB’s single best program, and their very strong environmental studies program.)</p>
<p>I find that people often overrank private schools with strong graduate programs (such as Stanford and Caltech) when comparing them with public universities by not realizing that the UCs have a different goal–which is to provide undergraduate education to the large mass of high achieving California high school graduates. Accordingly, the lack of professional schools at a school like UCSB is based upon the demographic of the population to be served–as well as the demands of the other schools within the same statewide college system. There are, quite simply, more professional schools in larger, older UCs in major population areas (such as UCLA and UC Berkeley and UC San Diego) than at UCSB. UCSB would probably have more by now if: (1) Sacramento hadn’t grown so quickly–thus requiring that at least some be located in Davis, and (2) the central valley hadn’t “demanded” its own UC–and thus been allocated the UC Merced campus with its business school and so-to-be medical school.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, the fact that UCSB does lack some of these professional programs must be taken into account at least somewhat when ranking the schools. As you properly point out, UCSB has (and will continue to have) some programs that rank tops not only in the state, but also when compared with universities nationally. Even considering that, I think that UCSB’s state ranking (among UCs and CSUs) at #4 or #5 or #6 is certainly fair–and certainly not one likely to be debated very much based upon the postings on this link so far.</p>
<p>One last thing–I also lived in Santa Barbara, in Goleta, for an 8 month period during the school year back in the late 1980s and I agree entirely with you that the “party” reputation at UCSB is largely undeserved. It seems like it is almost entirely based upon one group of promotional videos put out by a particular fraternity during the 1990s aimed to garner publicity for them and the videos they were selling. It has given the school a bad “rap” it doesn’t at all deserve, and shouldn’t enter into any university ranking discussion at all IMHO.</p>
<p>P.S. For a real “party” school, check out West Virginia or Wisconsin–people at UCSB are amateurs compared to the professional partiers at those schools.</p>