About UC San Diego

UC San Diego: THE INSTITUTION

Forward Thinking at the Gateway to the Pacific: Nestled along the Pacific Ocean on 1,200 acres of coastal woodland, UC San Diego is a powerful magnet for those seeking a fresh, next-generation approach to education and research. Since its founding over four decades ago, UC San Diego — one of the ten campuses in the world-renowned University of California system — has rapidly achieved the status as one of the top institutions in the nation for higher education and research. UC San Diego’s interdisciplinary ethos and tradition of innovation and risk-taking underlie its research strength and ability to recruit top scholars and students.

Budget: UC San Diego’s annual revenues are $2.4 billion. (23% of this total is from the federal government for research; 12% is from the State of California for education.)

Students: UC San Diego received more than 47,000 applications for fall 2008 admission (the third highest application rate in the University of California system). The average high school GPA of admitted freshmen for fall 2008 was 4.06 and average SATI Reasoning scores were 629 Critical Reading, 670 Math and 641 Writing. Total campus enrollment for fall ‘07 is 27,500. The campus ranks 2nd nationally among major research universities sending students abroad in full-year programs, and 8th among U.S. research institutions in the number of international scholars hosted.

Economic Impact: UC San Diego is an engine for regional economic growth. The university’s faculty and alumni have spun-off at least 200 local companies, including more than a third of the region’s biotech companies. In addition, the campus is San Diego County’s 3rd largest employer (behind the federal government and state government), with a monthly payroll in excess of $96 million and nearly 27,000 employees.

Specialized Resources: UC San Diego’s graduate and professional schools include Scripps Institution of Oceanography; School of Medicine; School of International Relations and Pacific Studies; Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences; Jacobs School of Engineering (graduate and undergraduate), and Rady School of Management. The campus is also home to the UC San Diego Medical Center; San Diego Supercomputer Center; California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2); Center for Research in Computing and the Arts; Center of Interdisciplinary Science for Art, Architecture, and Archaeology (CISA3); Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies; Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation; and Institute of the Americas.

ACADEMIC RANKINGS

U.S. News and World Report ranks UC San Diego as 8th best public university in the nation, and 38th among the nation’s top 50 universities.

UC San Diego is ranked the 4th best university in the nation by the Washington Monthly’s 2007 College Guide, based on the positive impact the university has had on the country.

UC San Diego was named the “hottest” institution in the nation for students to study science by Newsweek and the 2006 Kaplan/Newsweek College Guide.

UC San Diego ranks 7th in the nation in National Academy of Sciences membership. (The top universities, in rank order, are: Harvard, Stanford, UC Berkeley, MIT, Princeton, Caltech, UC San Diego, Yale, Wisconsin-Madison, Chicago and Washington.)

The journal Foreign Policy ranked UC San Diego 9th in the nation for international relations studies and 10th for international public policy studies.

The National Research Council ranks UC San Diego 10th in the nation in the quality of its faculty and graduate programs. The NRC ranks oceanography and neurosciences 1st in the nation.

The 2009 edition of The Princeton Review's annual college guide ranks UC San Diego as the 6th best value among public universities in the nation.Kiplinger's Personal Finance ranks UC San Diego 11th nationally for best values in public colleges. 

The 2008 Academic Rankings of World Universities conducted by Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China ranks UC San Diego 14th internationally.

The Preuss School, a public charter at UC San Diego, is the 6th best high school in the nation by Newsweek and the 10th best high school by U.S. News and World Report.

RESEARCH IMPACT

UC San Diego’s total research funding for 2006-07 was $714 million. The National Science Foundation ranks UC San Diego 7th in the nation in federal R&D expenditures. (The top ten research universities, in rank order, are: Johns Hopkins, Wisconsin-Madison, UCLA, Michigan, UCSF, Washington, UC San Diego, Stanford, Pennsylvania, Duke.)

The Power of Academic Medicine:The UC San Diego Medical Center is the only San Diego hospital ranked among the best in the nation in eight specialty areas (respiratory diseases, rheumatology, kidney disease, gynecology, cancer, urology, psychiatry, and ear, nose and throat) in the 2008 U.S. News and World Report annual “Best Hospitals” issue.

The Milken Institute ranks UC San Diego 6th among the world’s leading universities in the strength of its biotechnology research publications and 8th in the number of biotech patents issued.

Thomson Scientific ranks UC San Diego the 7th highest-impact research institution in the nation from 2001-2005, based on the citation impact of published research in science and the social sciences. Based on the number of citations, UC San Diego ranks 2nd in the nation in the field of pharmacology, 4th in the nation for molecular biology and genetics, and 5th in the nation for clinical medicine.

In the 2008 survey of graduate programs by U.S. News, the Jacobs School of Engineering ranked 4th and the School of Medicine ranked 2nd in the nation for research expenditures per faculty member.

CURRENT FACULTY HONORS

Nobel Prize:George E. Palade, 1974, physiology/medicine; Renato Dulbecco, 1975, physiology/medicine; Harry Markowitz, 1990, economics; Paul Crutzen, 1995, chemistry; Mario J. Molina, 1995, chemistry; Sydney Brenner, 2002, medicine; Clive W.J. Granger and Robert F. Engle, 2003, economics.  The 2007 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to former vice president Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), whose roster of researchers lists nearly two dozen Scripps Institution of Oceanography scientists including Mario Molina, Veerabhadran Ramanathan, Richard Somerville and Lynne Talley.

Fields Medal: Professor of mathematics Efim Zelmanov (1994).

Balzan Prize: Freeman Gilbert, SIO professor (1990), and Wolfgang Berger, SIO professor (1993).

National Medal of Science: Astrophysicist Margaret Burbidge and oceanographer Walter Munk (1985); physician/scientist George Palade (1986), and bioengineer Yuan-Chen Fung (2000).

National Humanities Medal: Latin American history scholar Ramon Eduardo Ruiz (1998).

Pulitzer Prize: Roger Reynolds (1989) Music.

Kyoto Prize: Oceanographer Walter Munk (1999).

Enrico Fermi Award: Physicist Herbert F. York (2000).

MacArthur Foundation Awards: Guillermo Algaze, anthropology; Nancy D. Cartwright, philosophy; Patricia Churchland, philosophy; Michael Freedman, mathematics; Ramon Gutierrez, history and ethnic studies; Edwin Hutchins, cognitive science; Russell Lande, biology and Michael Schudson, communication.

Tony Award: Judith Dolan, theatre and dance (1997)

Academy Award: Henrik Wann Jensen, computer science and engineering (2004)

Prepared by: UCSD University Communications Office, 8/12/2008