University of California, Irvine

The University of California, Irvine is a public coeducational research university situated in Irvine, California. Founded in 1965, it is the second-youngest University of California campus and is widely recognized as UCI or UC Irvine.

UC Irvine's name is originated from the Irvine Company, which donated 1,000 acres (4.0 km2) for a single dollar and sold another 510 acres (2.1 km2) to the University of California. In 1971, the University of California and the Irvine Company planned a city around the campus, which was incorporated as the city of Irvine.

UC Irvine's location is in the heart of Orange County, California, serving the fifth most-populous county in the United States. Additionally, UCI also maintains the UC Irvine Health Sciences system (with its flagship UCI Medical Center in Orange), the University of California, Irvine, Arboretum, and a portion of the University of California Natural Reserve System. UC Irvine is also a Public Ivy.

Schools

UC Irvine's academic units are referred to as Schools. There are eight undergraduate Schools, two graduate Schools, one Department, and one field of Interdisciplinary Studies. The most recent academic unit, the College of Health Sciences, was established in 2004.

• Claire Trevor School of the Arts
• School of Biological Sciences
• Paul Merage School of Business
• Department of Education
• Henry Samueli School of Engineering
• College of Health Sciences
• School of Humanities
• Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences
• Interdisciplinary Studies
• Donald Bren School of Law (expected opening fall 2009)
• School of Medicine
• School of Physical Sciences
• School of Social Ecology
• School of Social Sciences
• Summer Session
• UC Irvine Extension
  
  Proposed academic units at UC Irvine:
  School of Design
  
  

UCI is a center for quality education that fosters the passionate and enthusiastic expansion of knowledge. Our graduates are equipped with the tools of analysis, expression and cultural understanding necessary for leadership in today’s world.

UCI is consistently ranked among the nation’s best universities – public and private – with achievements in a broad range of fields that have garnered high national rankings for many schools, departments and programs. Three UCI researchers have won Nobel Prizes – two in chemistry and one in physics.

The university is noted for its excellent research and graduate programs, an extensive commitment to undergraduate education, and a growing number of professional schools and programs of academic importance and social significance. Recent additions include public health, pharmaceutical sciences and nursing science programs, as well as a new School of Law scheduled to open in 2009.

Some Facts about UCI

UCI is among the fastest-growing campuses in the UC system. Increasingly a first-choice campus for students, UCI attracts record numbers of undergraduate applications each year and admits freshmen with highly competitive academic profiles. We enrolled our first undergraduates in public health and nursing science last year, and are continuing to expand our educational role in these and other fields critical to California's health and prosperity. This year, we hired renowned constitutional law scholar Erwin Chemerinsky as the inaugural dean for our new law school, which welcomes its first class in fall 2009.

UCI is a center for quality education and is consistently ranked among the nation's best universities. Achievements in the sciences, arts, humanities, medicine, and management have garnered top 50 national rankings for more than 40 academic programs. Three UCI researchers have won Nobel Prizes—most recently Irwin A. Rose, in chemistry, in 2004.

UCI reaches beyond the classroom and laboratory to help solve societal issues and support human development. We are a hub for stem cell research, a trailblazer in understanding global warming, and a leader in the fight against breast cancer. Our nationally ranked medical center in Orange serves as Orange County's only Level I trauma center, and we are currently building a new state-of-the-art university hospital that will further strengthen medical care for the region's citizens.

University of California, Irvine ranked 140th in the THES-QS 2007 World University Ranking

University of California, Irvine ranked 132nd in the THES-QS 2008 World University Ranking

University of California, Irvine ranked 161st in the THES-QS 2009 World University Ranking

University of California, Irvine ranked 146th in the QS 2010 World University Ranking

University of California, Irvine ranked 148th in the QS 2011 World University Ranking

University of California, Santa Barbara

The University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) is a selective, research-oriented public university located on the Pacific Ocean in Santa Barbara County, California, USA. It is one of 10 campuses of the University of California. Its current student body is around 20,000. UCSB ranks as the 35th university worldwide and the 27th in the United States in the 2007 Academic Ranking of World Universities, which measures scientific research leading toward a Nobel Prize. U.S. News & World Report ranks the university as the 44th best in the United States in terms of quality of undergraduate education.

History

The predecessor to UCSB, Santa Barbara State College, focused on teacher training, industrial arts, home economics, and foreign languages. Intense lobbying by an interest group in the City of Santa Barbara led by Thomas Storke and Pearl Chase persuaded the State Legislature, Governor Earl Warren, and the Regents of the University of California to move the State College over to the more research-oriented University of California system in 1944. The State College system sued to stop the takeover, but the Governor did not support the suit. A state initiative was passed, however, to stop subsequent conversions of State Colleges to University of California campuses.

Originally, the Regents envisioned a small, several thousand-student liberal arts college, a so-called `Williams College of the West,' at Santa Barbara. Chronologically, UCSB is only the third general-education campus of the University of California, after Berkeley and UCLA (the only other state campus to have been acquired by the UC system.) The original campus the Regents acquired in Santa Barbara was located on only one hundred acres of largely unusable land on a seaside mesa, however. The availability of a 400 acre ex-Marine Base on another seaside mesa in Goleta, which the Regents could acquire for free from the federal government, led to that site becoming the Santa Barbara campus in 1949. Originally, only 3000-3500 students were anticipated, but the post WWII baby boom led to the designation of general campus in 1958, along with a name change from "Santa Barbara College" to "University of California, Santa Barbara," and the discontinuation of the industrial arts program for which the State college was famous. A Chancellor, Samuel B. Gould, was appointed in 1959. All of this change was done in accordance with the California Master Plan for Higher Education.

Academics

UC Santa Barbara is one of only 62 research-intensive institutions elected to membership in the Association of American Universities. UCSB celebrates the five Nobel Prizes won by faculty members since 1998 for landmark research in chemistry, physics, and economics. U.S. News and World Report's guide, "America's Best Colleges," the most widely read college guide in the country, ranks UCSB the 16th best public university in the nation. UCSB was selected as one of the first California Institutes for Science and Innovation. Among all applicants (47,893 for Fall 2006), 12,033 had a high school Grade Point Average of 4.0 or higher.

UCSB has three undergraduate colleges: the College of Letters & Science, the College of Engineering, and the College of Creative Studies. The College of Creative Studies offers students an alternative approach to education by allowing them to pursue advanced, independent work in the arts, mathematics, and sciences.

The campus also has two professional schools, the Donald Bren School of Environmental Science, located in Bren Hall, and the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education. UCSB also hosts eight National Research Centers, including the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (at which many of the world's prominent theoretical physicists, including Stephen Hawking, are regular visitors) and the Materials Research Laboratory. Five of these Centers are supported by the National Science Foundation. Its faculty includes 5 Nobel laureates, 25 members of the National Academy of Sciences, 24 members of the National Academy of Engineering,and 21 members of the Academy of Arts and Sciences.

• College of Creative Studies
  
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• College of Engineering
  
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• College of Letters and Science
  
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• Donald Bren School of Environmental Science and Management
  
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• Gevirtz Graduate School of Education
  

Short Facts

In addition to five winners of Nobel Prizes, UCSB's faculty includes many elected members or fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (25), the National Academy of Sciences (27), the National Academy of Engineering (27), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (38).

UCSB is one of only 62 institutions elected to membership in the prestigious Association of American Universities. And the Newsweek guide to America's best colleges has named UCSB one of the country's "hottest colleges" twice in the past five years.

UCSB Ranked 117th in the 2007 THES-QS World University Ranking

UCSB Ranked 98th in the 2008 THES-QS World University Ranking
UCSB Ranked 106th in the 2009 THES-QS World University Ranking
UCSB Ranked 116th in the 2010 QS World University Ranking

UCSB Ranked 118th in the 2011 QS World University Ranking

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA (UC)

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA



The University of California (UC) is a public university system in the state of California. Under the California Master Plan for Higher Education, the University of California is a part of the state's three-tier public higher education system, which also includes the California State University system and the California Community Colleges system.

The University of California has a combined student body of more than 191,000 students, over 1,340,000 living alumni, and a combined systemwide and campus endowment of just over $7.3 billion (8th largest in the United States).Its first campus, UC Berkeley, was founded in 1868, while its tenth and newest campus, UC Merced, opened in the fall of 2005. All campuses enroll both undergraduate and graduate students, with two exceptions: the University of California, San Francisco campus enrolls only graduate and professional students in the medical and health sciences, and the independently administered Hastings College of the Law (also located in San Francisco) enrolls only graduate students. Six of its undergraduate campuses are ranked among the top 50 universities by both the U.S. News and World Report and the Academic Ranking of World Universities.

The University of California's campuses boast large numbers of distinguished faculty in almost every field. The University is considered a model for public institutions across the United States, although as of the 2005-06 fiscal year, only 29% of its total budget comes from the State.



Academics

UC researchers and faculty are responsible for 5,505 inventions and 2,497 patents. UC researchers create 3 new inventions per day. At 32 million items, the University of California library system contains the third largest collection in the world, after the Library of Congress and the British Library.

Collectively, the system counts among its faculty (as of 2002):
389 members of the Academy of Arts and Sciences
5 Fields Medal recipients
19 Fulbright Scholars
25 MacArthur Fellows
254 members of the National Academy of Sciences
91 members of the National Academy of Engineering
13 National Medal of Science Laureates
32 Nobel laureates. Nobel laureates are present at all campuses except Davis, Merced, Riverside, and Santa Cruz.
106 members of the Institute of Medicine

 
AAU and AASCU

The University of California and most of its campuses are members of the Association of American Universities (AAU), while the California State University and several of its campuses are members of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU).

 
Governance




The University of California is governed by the Regents of the University of California, as required by the current Constitution of the State of California. Eighteen regents are appointed by the governor for 12-year terms. One member is a student appointed for a one-year term. There are also 7 ex officio members — the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Speaker of the Assembly, Superintendent of Public Instruction, president and vice president of the Alumni Associations of UC, and the UC President.

The Academic Senate, made up of faculty members, is empowered by the Regents to set academic policies. In addition, the systemwide faculty chair and vice-chair sit on the Board of Regents as non-voting members.

Originally the President ran only the first campus, Berkeley. Now, the Regents appoint a president to run the entire system. The UC Office of the President is located in downtown Oakland and effectively serves as the system headquarters. Individual campuses are managed by Chancellors, who are given a great degree of autonomy.

Admissions

Each UC school handles admissions separately, but a student wishing to apply for undergraduate admission uses one application for all UCs. If it is not already in electronic form, the application is then scanned into a computer and distributed to the individual campus undergraduate admission offices. Graduate and professional school admissions are handled directly by each department or program to which one applies.

Prior to 1986, students who wished to apply to a UC for undergraduate study could only apply to one campus. If the student was rejected at that campus, but otherwise met the UC minimum eligibility requirements, he or she would be redirected to another campus with available space. For students who did not wish to be redirected, the application fee was returned. In 1986, that system was changed to the current "multiple filing" system, in which a student can apply to as many or as few UC campuses as he or she wants on one application, paying a fee for each campus. This system significantly increased the numbers of applications to the Berkeley and Los Angeles campuses, since students could choose which campus they wanted to attend after they received acceptance letters, without the fear of being redirected to a campus they did not want to attend.

The University of California accepts fully eligible students from among the top eighth of California public high school graduates through regular statewide admission, or the top 4% of any given high school class through Eligibility in the Local Context (see below). All eligible California high school students who apply are accepted to the University, though not necessarily to the campus of choice. Eligible students who are not accepted to the campus(es) of their choice are placed in the "referral pool", where campuses with open space may offer admission to those students.

Undergraduate admissions are conducted on a two-phase basis. In the first phase, students are admitted based solely on academic achievement. This accounts for between 50 to 75% of the admissions. In the second phase, the university conducts a "comprehensive review" of the student's achievements, including extracurricular activities, essay, family history, and life challenges, to admit the remainder. Very rarely, students who do not qualify for regular admission are "admitted by exception." In 2002, 2% of these exceptions were granted.

The process for determining admissions varies. At some campuses, such as Davis, Santa Barbara, and San Diego, a point system is used to weight grade point average, SAT Reasoning or ACT scores, and SAT Subject scores, while at Berkeley, Irvine, and Los Angeles, academic achievement is examined in the context of the school and the surrounding community.

Race, sex, national origin, and ethnicity have not been used as UC admission criteria since the passing of Proposition 209. However, this information is collected for statistical purposes.