University of California, San Diego

The University of California, San Diego (popularly known as UCSD) is a public, coeducational university located in La Jolla, California. The university, one of ten University of California campuses, was founded in 1959 around the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Organization

Undergraduate colleges

Undergraduate housing is organized around a system of residential colleges modeled after those at the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge, and somewhat similar to the systems at UC Santa Cruz and Princeton University. At UCSD, each college has its own campus and places of residence, and requires a different core writing course. Each college also has specific general education requirements.

UCSD's six colleges are: Roger Revelle College, founded in 1964 as First College, which has highly structured requirements; John Muir College, founded in 1967 as Second College, which emphasizes a "spirit of self-sufficiency and individual choice" and offers loosely structured general-education requirements; Thurgood Marshall College, founded in 1970 as Third College, which emphasizes "scholarship, social responsibility and the belief that a liberal arts education must include an understanding of ^* role in society"; Earl Warren College, founded in 1974 as Fourth College, which requires students to pursue a major of their choice while also requiring two "programs of concentration" in disciplines unrelated to each other and to their major; Eleanor Roosevelt College, founded in 1988 as Fifth College, which focuses its core education program on a cross-cultural interdisciplinary course sequence entitled Making of the Modern World; and Sixth College, founded in 2002 with a focus on "historical and philosophical connections among culture, art and technology."

Undergraduates can major in any discipline offered at UCSD without regard to their undergraduate college. However, the colleges issue undergraduate diplomas and hold individual commencement ceremonies.

Student life

The campus' undergraduate population is represented by a formal student government, known as the A.S. Council. Recently, the council made national news over controversy over pornography broadcasted over the A.S.-funded television station. The A.S. Council also funds three quarterly festivals during the year: FallFest, WinterFest, and Sun God. Sun God is named after the statue created by artist Niki de Saint Phalle, and is the most well known of the three festivals, touching off a day long series of concerts, performances, free items, and celebration before the final free concert takes place in the evening. Traditionally, many students also attend the day's events inebriated or with alcohol on their person, an action that rarely occurs during other parts of the year.

Each of the undergraduate colleges focuses on enhancing student life through various programs and organizations as well as through residential life programs. There are also three campus centers that attempt to cultivate a sense of community among faculty, staff and students--the Cross-Cultural Center, the Women's Center and the LGBT Resource Center.

Another major student-run institution is the UCSD Guardian, the campus' twice-weekly student newspaper.

Major divisions

In addition to academic division by college, courses and programs at UCSD are also divided into the following divisions:

Graduate and professional schools

Research centers

Charter School

The Preuss School is a charter school established on the UCSD campus in 1999 to provide an intensive college preparatory curriculum for low-income students from the greater San Diego area.

Admissions

For the 2006-2007 academic period, UCSD received 43,587 freshmen applications of which 19,933 students were offered fall admission, making the admission rate about 45.7%. The group of admitted students attained a mean weighted high school GPA of 4.04 and an average SAT scores of 630, 667, and 639 respectively, for Critical Reading, Math and Writing.[http://universityofcalifornia.edu/admissions/undergrad_adm/selecting/camp_profiles/camp_profiles_ucsd.html

UC San Diego is one of the most selective universities in the nation. Matriculating students tend to indicate a preference for the University's large environment and largely renowned professors and programs while the top four overlapping schools for applicants are UCLA, UC Berkeley, USC, and Stanford. ^*

Graduate admissions are largely centralized through the Office of Graduate Studies and Research, but the Rady School of Management and the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies (IR/PS) do handle their own admissions.

Athletics

UCSD’s sports teams are called the Tritons. This mascot is largely unknown due to the university lacking a football team, with UCSD's perennial strengths lying in swimming, water polo, soccer, volleyball, crew, track and field, and tennis instead. UCSD participates in the NCAA's Division II, in the California Collegiate Athletic Association, although water polo, fencing, and men's volleyball compete at the Division I level. Before joining Division II in 2000, for years the school participated at the Division III level and won numerous national championships there. However, due to its comparatively large student body and a lack of west-coast Division III opponents, UCSD moved up to Division II.

UCSD is the only NCAA Division II school that does not offer athletic scholarships. In 2005, the NCAA created a rule that made it mandatory for Division II programs to award athletic grants; a measure has been proposed to begin offering small grants to all intercollegiate athletes in order to meet this requirement.

In addition to UCSD's NCAA teams, the school fields a number of club sports teams. The UCSD surfing team has won the national title six times. The UCSD kendo team won the national title in 2005 and many UCSD kendo team graduates compete for the USA Kendo Team.^*

Recognition

In the 2006 Newsweek Magazine review, "America's 25 Hottest Colleges," UCSD was selected as the "Hottest for Science," noting the school's location, research grants, tradition, and diverse topics of study as key points For 2006, Berkeley and UCLA. The 2005 Academic Ranking of World Universities released by Shanghai Jiao Tong University ranked UCSD 11th in the United States and 13th in the world. In the same year, The Times Higher Education Supplement ranked UCSD as 42nd in the world overall (a significant drop from its 24th ranking in 2004), 14th in the world for biomedicine, and 48th in the world for science ^*." target="_blank" >Also in 2005, the Kiplinger's ranked UCSD 11th in the nation for “First-Class Education at Bargain Prices." [http://admissions.ucsd.edu/dev3/whatsgreat/na_hr.html" target="_blank" >^*

For 2007, US News and World Report ranked the graduate School of Medicine as 14th in nation for medical research and 33rd for primary care (a significant drop from its #7 ranking in 2005). UCSD's graduate program in behavioral neuroscience was ranked second in the nation while its cognitive pyschology program was ranked third. Moreover, the Jacobs School of Engineering overall was ranked 11th in the nation tied with Cornell. Its biomedical engineering program specifically was ranked second in the nation behind Johns Hopkins, and constitutes the flagship department in the Jacobs School of Engineering. ^*

UCSD has total annual research funding of more than $600 million. The National Science Foundation has ranked UCSD first in the UC system and sixth in the nation in terms of Federal research expenditures. Some 200 San Diego companies have been founded by UCSD faculty and alumni, and over 40% of the people employed in the San Diego biotechnology industry work in UCSD spin-offs. Science Watch ranked UCSD fifth in the world for highest research impact, based on papers published and cited in the field of molecular biology and genetics^*.

Sixteen UCSD faculty members have won the Nobel Prize, nine of whom are currently on the faculty. UCSD faculty also include nine MacArthur Fellows and 146 Guggenheim Fellows. UCSD ranks sixth in the nation in terms of National Academy of Science membership.

In 1995, the National Research Council ranked UCSD faculty the 10th-best in the nation, and ranked numerous graduate programs among the top ten in the United States in terms of quality: neurosciences (1st), oceanography (1st), bioengineering (2nd), physiology (2nd), pharmacology (3rd), theatre and dance (3rd), genetics (6th), geosciences (6th), cell and developmental biology (7th), anthropology (9th), biochemistry and molecular biology (2nd), political science (2nd), aerospace engineering (10th), and mechanical engineering (10th). UCSD also counts among its research centers the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the San Diego Supercomputer Center.

UCSD's biological science related research, aided by a strong local biotechnology sector, is especially well-respected.

Public art

More than a dozen public art projects, part of the Stuart Collection, decorate the campus. Perhaps the most famous of these is the Sun God, a large winged creature located near the Faculty Club. Other Stuart Collection art includes a collection of Stonehenge-like stone blocks, a large coiling snake path, a building that flashes the names of vices and virtues in bright neon lights, and three metallic Eucalyptus trees, each with their own personalities.

Notable people

See List of University of California, San Diego people

External links

IRC Channels

#sdcolleges on irc.freenode.net - A social channel frequented by UCSD students and staff.

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