<p>I thought I mentioned at the end of the post that you won’t be limited at any mid-tier UC and up and most will offer quite similar opportunities. UCSB definitely will be better for some people but I wasn’t ranking in terms of undergrad education, more of prestige/overall output. If we were talking about undergrad education I think UCSD would be lower than mid-tier UCs. When I factored in research etc. UCSD goes to #3 and UCD goes to #4. Research is a pretty decent measure of the school’s strength. </p>
<p>I haven’t been to UCSB but when my friend toured someone ran into the hall and barfed all over the ground lol. I also checked uni go.com which is where I “confirmed” the party school reputation. Granted it’s only 15 students but I felt my conclusion wasn’t necessarily against the evidence. I think UCSB was named hottest party school a while back as well. I know there are definitely studious students and students that have a work hard play hard attitude, but as a whole I’d say the party school reputation is probably accurate. Because UCSB is also strong academically you aren’t going to have issues like you might at ASU or something, but that’s because going to any UC sans merced is going to be fine for jobs. I don’t think it is a huge deal but I do think davis has a bit better reputation ( still deciding with 1 more day to go, probably won’t even go to davis, but people are always really enthused about davis when I talk to people about it). UCSB has a pretty amazing marine bio program right? All UCs are great schools (ucr/ucsc/ucm not as much but still good) and UCSB probably offers something many want: a place to de-stress at the end of the week. </p>
<p>I didn’t/don’t want to attack UCSB, I just thought it was really weird to place UCSB above UCD in terms of prestige etc. given the huge disparities on research/endowment and even with student profile davis edges them out by a bit. They’re all around the same but davis definitely seems to be rising faster than other mid-tier UC (a few years ago their stats weren’t very impressive as someone posted and had 60-70% acceptance, now it is 45% I think). </p>
<p>These schools aren’t a ranking for a specific major (I’d hate to go to cal for pre-med) but more of general research output etc. I didn’t know UCSB was more LACish than national university. In 5 years I think we’ll see a further stratification of the UC schools and where they fall will be clearer (they’re all going up at least !)</p>