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I'm going to assume you're not in California. There's a huge prestige gap between all the CSUs except for Cal Poly SLO and the UCs, and there's a big prestige g
by OkayPhysicist 3y ago
I'm going to assume you're not in California. There's a huge prestige gap between all the CSUs except for Cal Poly SLO and the UCs, and there's a big prestige gap at the low end of the UCs, with Merced being a gamble on it getting its footing at some point, and Riverside being (until the introduction of Merced) the least prestigious UC.
UC Santa Cruz wins the prestige discussion hands down: ever since Cloudflare, they've been an A-list program.
- toast0 3y agoI mean, unremarkable UC vs unremarkable CSU seems like kind of iffy; yeah unremarkable UC is better, but not better enough to make it a strong decision criteria, IMHO. But if you say UC Santa Cruz is well-known, then there you go. That's got some prestige, but probably not a school you would consider if you were applying to schools with prestige as your big criteria, which was more of my point.
- OkayPhysicist 3y agoIt's not iffy, at all. The CSUs (except Cal Poly) are small, largely commuter schools, predominantly filled with students who otherwise wouldn't be going to college. No one's traveling from out of state to attend a CSU. In contrast, the UCs range from "notable mid-size university", comparable to the most prestigious state schools in any other state on the low end with UC Riverside, to "top 10 universities in the world"-type institutions on the high end with Berkeley and Santa Cruz. People absolutely travel from not just all over the country, but all over the globe, to attend UCs.