UCLA vs UCSD vs ASU Barrett. Please help me choose!

sbdad12
Mon, 26 Apr 2021 20:30:46 +0000

@Anxiouscollegestuden , congrats, those are all great schools. Allow me to weigh in to confuse you even more.

We live in SoCal so we are in state. Daughter applied to these three schools, rejected at UCLA, accepted at UCSD, UCSB, and Cal Poly SLO. Chose to go to ASU Barrett on a full tuition ride, but that was not the deciding factor. She has loved her first year.

My own preference would be UCLA first, ASU Barrett second, and UCSD third.

UCLA is too good of a school to pass up for an in state cost. Yes, you have some drawbacks, academics are intense, traffic sucks (but where are you going on campus?), etc. But it is widely known as one of the best 3 public universities in the country.

UCSD turned me off right away. Socially, it looked really dead (UC Socially Dead), it seemed very STEM-focused, and as someone else said, it is not on the beach itself like UCSB, but on the cliffs and can take a while to get down there. The school is separated from La Jolla and UTC, although the San Diego trolley has a nearby stop now I believe.

ASU and Tempe have a ton to do, Barrett has a really good reputation (it is in EVERY ranking of top honors colleges), my daughter gets first pick of all her classes, the dorms are nice (she gets a pool in hers next year!), the food is really good, socially it’s great, but it is not the party school it once was, and she is surrounded by a lot of high achieving students like her. Barrett has a ton of National Merit Finalists and National Hispanic Recognition Program finalists–all really bright students. The professors come from top universities, are well published and regarded, and the school caters to students. You get the best of a small LAC in a large university. If diversity is important, there has to be a large Asian population there. (I noticed this on my visit, although not as noticeable as UCLA or UCSD). Neither UCLA or UCSD have both the small and large aspect. Grad schools respect the school too. I checked with my own grad school’s admissions as I had some doubt. Check out publicuniversityhonors dot com or this article: https://blog.prepscholar.com/best-honors-colleges-programs-ranking

One issue that the UCs have is impacted (capped space) majors and classes, especially UCLA for psychology; I dont believe it is impacted at UCSD. That can turn a 4 year experience into a 5 year experience. ASU and especially Barrett does not have this issue. https://stack.dailybruin.com/2019/05/21/change-major/#:~:text=Roughly%2030%25%20of%20UCLA%20students,political%20science%20and%20psychology%20students.

If you are paying through loans, the $10K difference per year is worth it for UCLA. For me, I wouldn’t pay the $40K extra to go to UCSD over Barrett. Save your money for grad school, unless UCLA lets you in off the WL.