Rank In Round - University Of California San Diego: Fill & Download for Free

I hope this helpsThere are 23 California State Universities (CSU's) compared to 9 University of California campuses (UC's), so you can go to college closer to home or at least near a close friend or relative.The UC schools by law must take the top 8% of the graduation class in California and subsequently must admit these students into at least one of their UC schools for top seniors. Usually it’s UC Merced, UC Riverside, or UC Santa Cruz that you are likely to get an auto admit to if it's just a “Top 8%” class ranking. These great schools are also incredible as they are ranked near the top 100 (meaning that every UC is close to being one of the 100 best-ranked universities in the US. It’s says a lot about the caliber of the schools where almost 10% of the top 100 schools (as ranked by US News) come from the large UC educational system. This is singularly unique for a public school system.The top 6 UC schools: UCLA, UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC Irvine, UCSD and UC Santa Barbara average a 4.25 weighted/4.5 gpa and a 1500 SAT so they are brutal to ever get admitted into. (And each of the top 6 is ranked in the top 20–40 and all are ranked in the top 100 globally). The GPA/SAT’s are for their 75 percentile that most admission experts believe you’ll need unless a special admit like first one college grad in family or non English at home or an African American/American Indian and then it’s the 25th percentile to look atAt a UC, ones GPA is paramount and usually the main determining factor in the admission decisions and why UCLA wants all As for its 75th percentile and a 3.92/4.0 for 25th percentile. UCLA is the hardest school in the country to get in (for grades-perfection is not easy) and is almost entirely grade based from what I have seen helping mentor some local kids. It’s that good and tough to crack an admit and Berkeley is not too far behind.The best three CS schools in order are Cal Poly SLO (San Luis Obispo), and then pretty much a tie between Long Beach, San Diego State and San Jose State. SLO is ridiculously hard to get in especially for computer science and engineering. Many California students choose it because it’s incredible and about half the cost of the UC so they get a lot of brilliant and brilliant cost conscious kids here so this school can be tougher than some of the top 6 UC depending more on major.For CS, they don’t care or ask about activities or leadership. It’s 100% GPA, sat and then your application. And the CS schools are much more generous than the UC or more forgiving for having some Bs or even Cs in many cases. The top UC schools are like getting into an Ivy but just much less important is your extracurriculars while the GPA is on par or higher than most Ivy’s which is wild if you think about it. The UC are grade-centric so look at the 75th percentile and it’s not always a given but a very good indicator if you will hit the lottery with an admit. UC Davis, UC Santa Cruz, UC Santa Barbara and UC Berkeley also heavily factor in besides grades/SAT scores your extracurriculars in a big way and they equally love diversity students/special admit. Davis takes 41% diversity. The UC schools do a great job especially in this area overall and should be commended. The UC give a major bump for taking 9 or more AP classes and that could be a determining factor if you have grades. But they also do a nice and fair check and make sure your school has lots of AP classes and if not will never penalize which is a great touch and something I admire about the schools.Both sets of schools take a lot of international and out of state students so unlike U Michigan or U Texas you’ll actually have a great shot for admission competing against your own category of students (and not against the off the chart California kids) who are dying to get into any top UC school over likely most other schools nationwide as there first choice (especially for public school kids)To show you how good and how well applied both the UC and CS schools are, the UC take all of the top five most applied to schools in the country with UCLA being number one and an close rotating list of these next contenders (UC Berkeley, UC San Diego, UC Irvine) and usually with UC Davis rounding out out the top 10. Also, two CS schools generally rank in the top 10 and these are San Jose State and San Diego State. It’s actually pretty incredible when you think about it since they are getting so many California kids to apply as well as a lot of of national and international students due to the perceived quality, caliber and general beauty of many of the campuses. An interesting anecdote is that the US News and World Report rankings to my knowledge doesn’t factor this in. Should they? Maybe and the question is do the kids applying actually know more than the admissions director or the employers or should this be a non factor as it. But that can be for another great Quora discussion one day?The cost of UC schools is about double for in state and more out of state than a CS and best of all there are so many CS where you can live at home and save money tooIt’s much easier getting into a CS schoolThe professors at CS usually, but not always, love teaching kids and why they do it while at the UC’s they may love teaching and be great at it but the focus is on research while teaching can be an after thought. At the CS schools it’s the primary reason for teaching so you will likely love your professors here. They are amazing. The UC are more hit and miss with some brilliant ones and then some brilliant ones you’d rather do research in all honesty and you would love it.this is a double edge sword but the competition will be easier at at CS so you can get a top grade with a lot of studying. I found CS schools much better and easier than UC schools and took lots of classes at both campuses. I enjoyed CS better on every level. The UC schools are highly competitive and the kids are overall really smart so it’s a battle to get top grades and your real advantage is to outstudy everyone-which isn’t always doable. Of course you always will find about 30–40% of the kids just go to have a good time so that will factor in if your class is curved.CS schools are more commuter schools so they are generally much tougher to make true life long friends or have a great social life at. It’s what we call “show and go.”Grad schools and employers give a major advantage to the top UC schools due to its perceived quality. Some great CS choices include San Diego State, California State Los Angeles and San Jose state, SLO and and Cal Poly Pomona which has the best career department and required internships.The choice is personal and you’ll have more clubs, usually better and sports and more kids (not always at the UC)Both are top notch values, provide a great education and good luck

Both are great schools. Here are some consideration pointsPrivate or Public-Loyola Marymount (LMU) is private and UC San Diego (UCSD) is public. This breaks down into two areas. The private schools are almost always much more expensive than the public schools especially in State. In fact, usually the in state school here will be at least half the cost. The second factor is that for the privates, they are almost always better than the publics in terms of helping you with internships, research opportunities and usually a better job placement center although I would give the edge there to UC San Diego Due to its reputation and how many companies want San Diego graduates. UCSD wins here taking into account the much better internships here.Rankings-UC San Diego is superior in the major rankings being ranked 19th in the world in the US News report and 37th in the US News USA rankings while LMU is a solid 62 in the USA and usually not highly ranked in most Worldwide rankings , and could be in the top several hundred universities. Big win here for UCSD. Yet this is only one part of your evaluation as to where to go; But it is an important factor.Location- LMU is in a great location in Playa Vista (Sunny southern Cal) which is a hotbed of start up capital companies and it’s also very close to great cities like Marina Del Rey, Venice, LA and the beaches so it’s a great place. However, San Diego is in a different league being in one of the nicest beaches and communities in the world in San Diego with incredible restaurants, bars, nightlife, clubs and it’s extremely scenic. The edge goes to San Diego. And a place where I love to vacation if that tells you anything.Campus- LMU only has about 5000 students and the campus is modern and absolutely gorgeous and the edge of a cliff overlooking Los Angeles. San Diego is equally impressive with beautiful buildings and a great campus in extremely scenic location. Let’s call it a tie. Almost anyone would love either place to attend school-How could you not.Students-San Diego is famous for being very Challenging, hard, intellectual and a University of Chicago like focus is on academics.Students do love the campus life and have fun but again the focus is on educational quality and hardwork. LMU is known for being a very laid back- group of students who focus on studying as well but it’s a very social and interactive place were kids become lifelong friends and really enjoy the social aspect of college. Social and student life goes to LMU.Research-San Diego’s reputation as a world leader for research means that you’ll have many more opportunities to do cutting out the edge research and get into a top PhD program with a letter from your professor versus LMU which is famous for being a great teaching college with also with good research. The microscope here (and telescope) scope says that San Diego which wins by a landslide here-at least that’s from my research.Graduate School- Phd programs love the reputation of San Diego students and two of my best friends who went to LMU (and loved it) later got into incredible schools like the Claremont College for an MBA and Harvard law school as top students so both are great but San Diego worldwide will open even more doors. SD wins accept for my two friends.Employment- California employers love UC schools and in particularly San Diego for the elite caliber of students. Both are in major job capitals but outside of Los Angeles, San Diego has a special niche, cache and will get you in the door much more frequently on average than a smaller campus with less alumni like LMU. Win for San DiegoIf You are looking for a fun well-rounded experience at a great all around top hundred school that kid absolutely love, you would want to choose LMU,you especially if your social and very outgoing. If you were looking for grad school or a job or even a top PhD programs, you would clearly want to go to UC San Diego which is one of the best schools in the world.Either choice is a great one. As we like to say in California, your outlook for either is sunny (and the skies the limit). Enjoy two can’t miss schools.

As a graduate of UCI's Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Science who minored in Cognitive Sciences, I interacted with quite a few of UCI's current and former faculty in that program, so I'll answer from that experience with the program, from a national and personal perspective, plus name a few of the professors I worked with and why I think they certainly give credibility to UCI's program.RankingsIt's good to remember that UCI is the second youngest of the University of California campuses, established in 1965. As such, it enjoys very high esteem among "young" campuses under 50 years old, though that obviously will change soon. In the 2012-2013 U.S. News and World Report rankings, UCI's cognitive sciences program ranked 16. I don't necessarily trust school rankings for detailed information, but this placement is impressive given the age of the school and how small the department actually is. I cannot find any 'cognitive science' denomination in this year's rankings.My ExperienceI participated with the cognitive sciences department mostly after I started undergrad research in the summer of 2009. The department leverages its strong connections with the university's computer science and statistics divisions. The cognitive scientists at UCI lean frequently toward the computational aspects of the field these days. There's lots of emphasis on modeling, simulation, and mathematical underpinnings. I suppose some might think this confirms your fears about "loose theorizing" going on in the program, but I saw a lot of pragmatism in the studies and experiments there. UCI doesn't have a dedicated department of neuroscience or neurobiology - there's just a specialization within the life sciences.By that virtue, the questions the faculty attempt to answer focus more on questions that modern neuroimaging and behavioral neuroscience can't answer by observation, which is exactly what I think computationally minded neuroscience should do. Instead of re-inventing the wheel with different material, I saw efforts to understand why the wheels turned the way they did. Above all, there was a lucidity about how much or little a given paper yields. There certainly wasn't any runaway optimism that I would associate with loose theorizing. No attempts to define all of consciousness, just specific tasks and parameterizations with constrained interpretations.The ProfessorsHere are just a few of the faculty members I feel I know well enough to speak for.Jeffrey L. KrichmarThis is the lab where I did most of my undergrad research, mostly around an algorithm called "NeuroEvolution for Augmenting Topologies" (NEAT) and some cerebellar modeling. The lab's start project is CARL, a robotic platform that behaves based on the neural network being simulated on its controlling computer. A lot of the work going on in the lab when I was an undergrad was vision oriented, everything from neuromodulation in different tasks to fear conditioning to saccadic eye movements and motor control. Professor Krichmar himself is an excellent mentor for any aspiring cognitive scientist. His lab, which only started in 2008, is heavily busy with lots of NSF funded projects, not to mention collaborations with other UCI and UCSD faculty, so he rarely had time to proactively guide me, but I can't think of any time when I asked for his input that he was unresponsive or unwilling to help. More than that, he shared my excitement when he thought an idea was interesting, tempered my expectations when I became too ambitious for a given time frame, and was honest with me when I wasn't giving enough time to my research projects and not meeting expectations. I credit my experience with him for getting me to grad school, not to mention an NSF graduate research fellowship.Mike D'ZmuraAs I recall, he was the chair of the program during my undergrad career and I took his special topics computer vision course. A very pragmatic leader working on the extremely difficult problem of making a mobile EEG system, which would open up an entire realm of behavioral experiments that are currently very difficult. If successful, it could be a valuable addition to the cognitive scientist toolset.Charlie ChubbI had little research related interaction with Professor Chubb, all I know being that he studies language to some extent. However, he was the instructor for the upper division class introducing learning theories and the grad course I took on MATLAB's psych toolbox. Of the more than 100 class instructors I had, he was easily one of the most personable and made excellent use of tools beyond lecture, which to me demonstrated his eagerness to teach not just the topic but 'how' to do it well. The format of many of the assignments taught me as much about how to collaborate and leverage peer review as it did about the course topics.Ramesh SrinivasanI never had an in person conversation with Professor Srinivasan, but he is the author of a book I'm currently reading, called Electric Fields of the Brain, which is an excellent introduction and reference to the physics behind EEG devices, as well as containing chapters on the common problems and mistakes of the field. I think it's valuable enough to dispel any suggestion that the use of these systems in the cognitive sciences program are haphazard or 'loose.'Michael LeeHe teaches a very engaging and interactive course on statistical methods using in cognitive science of learning and memory related problems. I have a feeling that if I had paid more attention to the exercises in this class, I would have been better prepared as a statistician. Many of the techniques, though I've since forgotten most of them, were valuable ways to assess behavioral data and create a working "idea" of how learning (such as learning how to count) works.SummaryWhile not as well known as some of the cognitive science programs in northern California, the east coast, or the San Diego cogsci community, the Irvine program has a very pragmatic bent, a small program, faculty that are very self-aware and lucid to any misinterpretations their results could give, and the graduate students in the program are well rounded people that enjoy a highly collaborative environment that permits working with multiple groups. I'm hard pressed to think of any "breakthroughs" from the program that would immediately eliminate any reservations someone might have, but the same is pretty true of any other program like this that I can think of. The culture of the program, however, makes me confident that its rigor is not to be doubted.