University of California, San Diego

The University of California, San Diego (also referred to as UC San Diego or UCSD) is a public research university located in La Jolla, California, United States. The university occupies 2141 acre near the coast of the Pacific Ocean with the main campus resting on approximately 1200 acre.

It is one of America's Public Ivy universities, which recognizes top public research universities in the United States. UCSD is the seventh oldest of the ten University of California campuses, and offers over 200 undergraduate and graduate degree programs, enrolling about 22,700 undergraduate and about 6,300 graduate students from the United States and around the world. Undergraduate education is organized into six residential colleges, each with its own curricular focus.

Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the university was first envisioned by Roger Revelle, then director of Scripps, to be a graduate school of science and engineering comparable in quality to Caltech. The university was admitted to the Association of American Universities in 1982. UC San Diego is a designated sea and space grant institution and has a very high level of research activity with $879.3 million in research and development expenditures in 2009. The university operates four research institutes, including the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, San Diego Supercomputer Center, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and UC San Diego Medical Center and is also affiliated with several regional research centers, such as the Salk Institute, the Burnham Institute for Medical Research, and the Scripps Research Institute. The university also houses two think tanks including the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, and the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies. UC San Diego faculty, researchers, and alumni have won twenty Nobel Prizes, eight National Medals of Science, eight MacArthur Fellowships, and two Fields Medals. Additionally, of the current faculty, 29 have been elected to the National Academy of Engineering, 95 to the National Academy of Sciences, and 106 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

UC San Diego student-athletes compete in 23 intercollegiate sports as the Tritons in Division II of the NCAA. As a member of the California Collegiate Athletic Association, the Tritons have won 24 championships in sports including soccer, volleyball, golf, tennis, water polo, and softball. The official colors of the university and its athletic teams are navy blue and California gold.

History
When the Regents of the University of California originally authorized the San Diego campus in 1956, it was planned as first imagined by Roger Revelle, Director of Scripps, to start as a graduate school of science and engineering comparable in quality to Caltech. Citizens of San Diego supported the idea, voting the same year to transfer to the university 59 acre of mesa land on the coast near the Scripps Institute. The Regents requested an additional gift of 550 acre of undeveloped mesa land northeast of Scripps, as well as 500 acres on the former site of Camp Matthews, but Revelle jeopardized the site selection by making public La Jolla's exclusive real estate practices antagonistic to minority racial and religious groups, angering local conservatives as well as UC Regent Edwin W. Pauley. UC President Clark Kerr satisfied San Diego city donors by changing the proposed name from University of California, La Jolla, to University of California, San Diego. The city voted in agreement to its part in 1958, and the UC approved construction of the new campus in 1960. Because of the clash with Pauley, Revelle was not made chancellor—Herbert York, first director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, was designated instead. York worked out the planning of the main campus according to the "Oxbridge" model, relying on many of Revelle's ideas.

UC San Diego was the first general campus of the UC to be designed "from the top down" in terms of research emphasis. Local leaders disagreed on whether the new school should be a technical research institute, like the preexisting Scripps Institution of Oceanography, or a more broadly based school that included undergraduates as well. John Jay Hopkins of General Dynamics Corporation pledged one million dollars for the former while the City Council offered free land for the latter. In 1956, the UC Regents approved a "graduate program in science and technology" that included undergraduate programs, a compromise that won both the support of General Dynamics and the city voters' approval. Nobel laureate Harold Urey, a physicist from the University of Chicago, was an early recruit to the faculty in 1958. (Revelle and Suess published the first paper on the Greenhouse effect the year before.) Maria Goeppert-Mayer was appointed professor of physics in 1960; she later won the Nobel Prize in 1963. The graduate division of the school opened in 1960 with 20 faculty in residence; instruction was offered in the fields of physics, biology, chemistry and earth science. Classes initially met in the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

By 1963, new facilities on the mesa been finished for the School of Science and Engineering, and new buildings were under construction for Social Sciences and Humanities. Ten additional faculty in those disciplines were hired, and the whole site was designated the First College of the new campus. York resigned as chancellor in 1963 and was replaced by John Semple Galbraith in 1964. The campus accepted its first undergraduate class of 181 freshman in 1964, and was designated Revelle College the next year. Second College was also organized in 1964, on the land deeded by the federal government. It was renamed John Muir College in April 1966. The UC San Diego School of Medicine also accepted its first students in 1966.

Political theorist Herbert Marcuse joined the faculty in 1965. A champion of the New Left, he reportedly was the first protestor to occupy the administration building in a demonstration organized by his student, Angela Davis. The American Legion offered to buy out the remainder of Marcuse's contract for $20,000; the Regents censured Chancellor McGill for defending Marcuse on the basis of academic freedom, but further action was averted after local leaders expressed support for Marcuse.

In 1967, student unrest against the United States involvement in the Vietnam War began to be felt at UC San Diego, when a student raised a Viet Minh flag over the campus. Protests escalated as the war continued and were only exacerbated after the National Guard fired on student protesters at Kent State University in 1970. Over 200 students occupied Urey Hall while one student set himself on fire in protest of the war.

Under Richard C. Atkinson, chancellor from 1980 to 1995, UCSD strengthened its ties with the city of San Diego by encouraging technology transfer with developing companies, transforming San Diego into a world leader in technology-based industries. Private giving rose from $15 million to nearly $50 million annually, faculty expanded by nearly 50%, and enrollment doubled to about 18,000 students during his chancellorship. In 1995, the quality of UC San Diego graduate programs was ranked tenth in the nation by the National Research Council.

UCSD is taking out a $40 million dollar loan against itself to offset $84.2 million in state budget cuts in 2009.

Notable research
UCSD researchers have made impacts including global warming research and the discovery of the Keeling Curve. The widely used computer language, UCSD Pascal was developed there,  (which influenced the design of Java), as was the Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP), the Kohn–Sham equations, and the discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein (GFP). Early research activity, notably in the sciences, was integral to shaping the focus and culture of the university.

Academics
UC San Diego is a large, primarily residential research university. The university is accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges. UC San Diego granted 6,137 bachelors degrees, 1,071 masters degrees, 491 doctorate degrees, and 129 medical degrees in 2010-2011.

UC San Diego's comprehensive doctoral program has high undergraduate degree coexistence as well as professional programs in business, medicine, and pharmacy. Its graduate division and professional schools include the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, School of Medicine, Institute of Engineering in Medicine, Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies, Jacobs School of Engineering, Rady School of Management, and Skaggs School of Pharmacy. The university offers 35 masters programs, 47 doctoral programs, 5 professional programs, and 9 joint doctoral programs with San Diego State University and other UC campuses. UC San Diego has noted graduate programs in biological sciences and medicine, economics, social and behavioral sciences, and physics.

Research
UC San Diego’s total research expenditures for 2009 were $879.3 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 1st in social psychology, 2nd in oceanography, 3rd in international relations, 5th in molecular biology and genetics, 17th in engineering, and 18th in Neuroscience and Behavior using non-survey, quantitative based metrics to determine research impact. UCSD also counts among its research centers the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the San Diego Supercomputer Center, the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, and the Center for US-Mexican Studies.

Residential colleges
UC San Diego's undergraduate division is organized into six residential colleges. They each set their own general-education requirements as well as having their own administrative and advising staff and granting unique degrees and separate commencement ceremonies. In chronological order by date of foundation, the six colleges are:
 * 1) Revelle College, founded in 1964 as First College, emphasizes a "Renaissance education" through the Humanities sequence which integrates history, literature, and philosophy. It has highly structured requirements.
 * 2) John Muir College, founded in 1967 as Second College, emphasizes a "spirit of self-sufficiency and individual choice" and offers loosely structured general-education requirements.
 * 3) Thurgood Marshall College, founded in 1970 as Third College, emphasizes "scholarship, social responsibility and the belief that a liberal arts education must include an understanding of one's role in society".
 * 4) Earl Warren College, founded in 1974 as Fourth College, 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 "toward a life in balance".
 * 5) 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", has a foreign language requirement, and encourages studying abroad.
 * 6) Sixth College, founded in 2002 with a focus on "historical and philosophical connections among culture, art and technology."

Students affiliate with a college based upon its particular philosophy and environment as majors are not exclusive to specific colleges. John Muir and Earl Warren enroll the largest number of undergraduate students followed by Thurgood Marshall, Revelle, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Sixth. Each undergraduate college sets the requirements for awarding provost's honors and honors at graduation in addition to departmental honors and Phi Beta Kappa honors.

Extension
UC San Diego Extension is the continuing education and public program branch of the university. Approximately 50,000 enrolles per year are educated in the university's extension program. The Extension provides over 90 certificate programs and over 12 specialized study programs. Most courses are held evenings and weekends for the convenience to working adults on the main campus or at one of three off campus locations:the Extension Sorrento Mesa Center, the Extension Rancho Bernardo Center, and the Extension Mission Valley Center. The Extension program also includes online only classes. The UCSD Extension program is not affiliated with the UC Cooperative Extension program.

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. The Preuss school has been ranked as one of the top ten best high schools in the United States by US News & World Report.

Rankings
UCSD is considered to be a Public Ivy. In addition, the University of California, San Diego is currently ranked 14th in the world and 12th nationally by the Academic Ranking of World Universities.The 2013 edition of U.S. News & World Report ranked UC San Diego as the 38th best university in the nation, tied for 3rd best of the UC schools and the 8th best public university in the United States.

In 2010, 2011, and 2012 Washington Monthly ranked UC San Diego 1st in the U.S. based on its contribution to the public good in three broad categories: Social Mobility (recruiting and graduating low-income students), Research (producing cutting-edge scholarship and PhDs), and Service (encouraging students to give something back to their country). The Graham-Diamond report ranked UCSD 8th overall in the country. UCSD was selected as the "Hottest" science school by Newsweek in 2006. Human Resources & Labor Review ranked the university 16th worldwide in 2010. In 2013 Kiplinger ranked UCSD 10th out of the top 100 best-value public colleges and universities in the nation, and 3rd in California. In 2012, QS World University Rankings ranked UCSD 70th overall in the world, and 14th in Life Sciences and Biomedicine. Thomson Reuters Science Watch ranks UCSD 7th of federally funded U.S. universities, based on the citation impact of their published research in major fields of science and the social sciences and 12th globally by volume of citations.

Campus
When the campus opened in 1964, it consisted only of Revelle College and Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Today, UC San Diego includes 761 buildings that span 2141 acre in the north part of San Diego. The main campus occupies only 1200 acre, while natural reserves cover the remaining 941 acre. The San Diego Freeway passes through the campus and separates the UC San Diego Medical Center and Mesa apartment housing from the greater part of the campus.

The campus includes eucalyptus groves, a sea port, several major research centers, and a wide range of architectural styles. It is located in the residential area of La Jolla and bordered by the communities of La Jolla Shores, Torrey Pines and University City. The layout of the main campus centers around Geisel Library, which is roughly surrounded by the six residential colleges of Thurgood Marshall, John Muir, Roger Revelle, Sixth, Earl Warren, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the School of Medicine. The six colleges maintain separate housing facilities for their students and each college's buildings are differentiated by distinct architectural styles. As residential colleges were added as the university expanded, buildings in newer colleges were designed with starkly different architectural styles than those of the original campus.

The iconic Geisel Library, named after Dr. Seuss, stands at the center of the campus. Library Walk, a heavily traveled pathway leading from Geisel Library to Gilman Drive, lies adjacent or close to Price Center, Center Hall, International Center, and various student services buildings, including the Student Services Center and the Career Services building.

In 2009, the Conrad Prebys Music Center opened as part of an expanding arts district. The building houses UCSD's music department, which is renowned for its programs in experimental music.

Public art
More than a dozen public art projects, part of the Stuart Collection, such as the Fallen Star in Warren, 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 table by Jenny Holzer, a building that flashes the names of vices and virtues in bright neon lights, and three metallic Eucalyptus trees, the Music Tree, the Literary Tree and the Third Tree commonly referred to as the Silent Tree. One of the newest additions to the collection is Tim Hawkinson's giant teddy bear made of six boulders located in between the newly constructed Calit2 buildings. Another notable campus sight are the graffiti tunnels of Mandeville Hall, a series of corridors that have been tagged with graffiti by generations of students over decades of use. Students in the university's visual arts department also often create temporary public art installations as part of their coursework. The university is also sponsoring a $56,000 performance art project to develop a sense of community at the sprawling campus.

Shepard Fairey (OBEY), most notable for the famous 2008 "Obama Hope" poster, painted a mural at one of UCSD most famous buildings and collectives, The Che Cafe, on an outside wall facing Scholars Drive incorporating Martin Luther King and other notable political figures. Underground street artist, Swampy, created a large piece inside the Che Cafe, visible through the Che Cafe courtyard depicting his signature mammoth skeleton. In 1993 local San Diego artist Mario Torero, in collaboration with UCSD art students, painted a mural at the Che Cafe in commemoration of Angela Davis and Rigoberta Menchu, along with other notable political figures. The Che Cafe remains a hub for underground and politically progressive artist. In 2009, Mario Torero was invited to create a mural called "Chicano Legacy" based on content suggested by UCSD Chicano students. The mural is a $10,000 digital image on a 15 by canvas mounted on the exterior of Peterson Hall, which includes representations of Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta as well as the kiosk structure at Chicano Park.

Special facilities
UCSD has the 5,000 animal Birch Aquarium and public museum, the San Diego Supercomputer Center, several large shake facilities including the world record holding Large High Performance Outdoor Shake Table, multiple open ocean research vessels, and a sea port.

Organization and administration
UCSD is one of the ten general campuses of the University of California system which is governed by a publicly appointed 26-member Board of Regents and administered by a president whose office is located in Oakland, California. Mark Yudof became the 19th president of the University system in June 2008. The board of regents appoint chancellors to serve as the chief administrative officer of each individual general campus. On August 1, 2012, Pradeep Khosla began his term as the eighth chancellor of UCSD, following the resignation of the previous chancellor, Marye Anne Fox. Chancellor Khosla's base salary of $411,000 annually has been the subject of controversy. The chancellor has an immediate staff of eight vice chancellors for academic affairs, research, marine sciences, student affairs, planning, external relations, business affairs, and health sciences.

The university operates on an academic quarter system with three primary academic quarters beginning in late September and ending in mid June.

Endowment
UCSD has at least two distinct endowments; one controlled by the Regents and another controlled by a privately appointed non-profit corporation called the UC San Diego Foundation. In 2008, the foundation received $121.8 million in support and managed assets worth $520.7 million in total.

In 2007, UCSD became the first university in the western region to top $1 billion in their eight-year fundraising campaign.

Student government
The campus's undergraduate population is represented by a formal student government, known as the Associated Students (ASUCSD) which was founded on 16 December 1964. By a student referendum it was abolished in 1972 and later reestablished in 1977. In 1986, the ASUCSD passed a non-binding resolution calling on the University of California to divest from its investments in South Africa due to the South African government’s institutionalized system of apartheid. The UC subsequently divested from such holdings later that year, a move Nelson Mandela later pointed to as a catalyst to ending white-minority rule in the country. Each college has its own student council as well.

The campus's graduate population is represented by the Graduate Student Association (GSA). The Association's membership comprises representatives from each of the graduate departments. The number of representatives is proportional to the number of graduate students within that particular department. Additionally, graduate students who serve as teaching or research assistants are represented by the UC-wide union of Academic Student Employees, UAW Local 2865.

Admissions and enrollment
UCSD received 60,839 freshmen applications for Fall 2012, and admitted 22,940, or 37.7%. Admitted students attained an average high school GPA of 4.07, an average ACT Composite score of 29, and an average combined SAT score of 1901 (average SAT scores of 639 for Critical Reading, 691 for Mathematics, and 661 for Writing). 31% of admitted students receive federal Pell Grants. According to the 2010 U.S. News & World Report, students applying to UCSD are also most likely to apply to UC Berkeley, Stanford University, and Harvard University for matriculation.

The four year, full-time undergraduate program comprises the majority of enrollments at the university. The university offers 125 bachelors degree programs organized into six disciplinary divisions: Arts, Humanities, Engineering, Science/Math, Biological Sciences, and Social Sciences. 38% of undergraduates major in the social sciences, followed by 25% in biological sciences, 18% in engineering, 8% in sciences and math, 4% in humanities, and 3% in the arts. Each undergraduate college sets its own general education requirements (GEs) for graduation in addition to the specific requirements of majors set by individual departments and programs.

Graduate admissions are largely centralized through the Office of Graduate Studies. However, the Rady School of Management, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies (IR/PS) handle their own admissions.

In 2009, UCSD mistakenly sent Admit Day welcome emails to all its 47,000 freshmen applicants, instead of just the 17,000 who had been admitted. However, school officials quickly realized the mistake and sent an apology email within two hours.

Student life
The main student hub is the Price Center located in the center of campus, just south of Geisel Library. The Price Center offers a variety of services, places, and spaces, including restaurants, the central bookstore, movie theater, and various student organizations. In Spring 2003, a Student Referendum was passed to expand the Price Center to nearly double the original size. The Price Center East expansion was officially opened to the public on May 19, 2008.

There are also three campus centers that cultivate a sense of community among faculty, staff, and students: the Cross-Cultural Center, the Women's Center, and the LGBT Resource Center. UCSD was the last UC campus to have such centers. All three centers, especially the Cross-Cultural Center that was created first, were founded in the mid-1990s and were the result of student movements that demanded change despite opposition by the campus administration.

There is a music venue on the campus grounds of some fame called the Ché Café, a collective organization serving multiple functions as an underground music venue, vegan food collective, center for grassroots organizations such as Food Not Bombs, and similar groups and activities. Prominent local San Diego bands such as The Locust and Pinback, and national tours such as Mates of State and The Dillinger Escape Plan have given the Ché Café some fame and praise as a radical vegan collective despite its small size (it fits a few hundred people) and limited sound equipment.

Concerts of classical and experimental contemporary music are performed at the Conrad Prebys Music Center, which was designed in consultation with famed architect Cyril M. Harris.

In 2012, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), named UCSD the most vegan-friendly large college or university in the United States.



Events and traditions
The Associated Students also coordinates a wide variety of concerts and events during the year, including All Campus Dance, Bear Gardens, Loft Events, and the Sun God Festival. The Sun God Festival, named after the statue created by artist Niki de Saint Phalle, is the best-known of the festivals. The festival has grown in its 28 year history into a 20,000 person event. The day consists of student org booths and performers, as well as an eclectic mix of musical acts across 3 stages.

Two other popular campus events include the Pumpkin Drop and the Watermelon Drop, which take place during Halloween and at the end of the third (Spring) academic quarter, respectively. The Watermelon Drop is one of the campus's oldest traditions, famously originating in 1965 from a physics exam question centering on the velocity on impact of a dropped object. A group of intrigued students pursued that line of thought by dropping a watermelon from the top floor of Revelle's Urey Hall to measure the size of the resulting splat. A variety of events surround the Watermelon Drop, including a pageant where an occasionally male but generally female "Watermelon Queen" is elected. In 1979 the Queen rode to Urey Hall in a yellow VW Bug with a cut-off top owned by the winner that year, Bill Clabby. The Pumpkin Drop is a similar event celebrated by the dropping of a large, candy-filled pumpkin from 11-story Tioga Hall, the tallest residential building on the Muir college campus.

Housing
Approximately 93% of the Fall 2011 entering class of freshmen were housed on campus in residence halls or apartments; 39% of all undergraduates live on campus.

The six undergraduate residential colleges have separate housing facilities for their students. First-year students are usually housed in the residence halls while upperclassmen live in the college apartments. Transfer students are housed in separate facilities apart from the residential colleges, in an area adjacent to Eleanor Roosevelt College called The Village. Housing plans also offer students access to dining facilities, and each student is allotted a certain number of "Dining Dollars" to purchase meals at dining halls and groceries at on-campus markets. Dining halls are located at the six colleges, with markets located adjacent or near them, except at Eleanor Roosevelt College. UC San Diego currently offers four years guaranteed housing to its incoming freshmen, and two years to incoming transfer students.

Graduate students are housed in one of seven apartment complexes. The Coast, Mesa, and One Miramar housing facilities are several minutes away from UC San Diego while the other four are located within the campus.

International House
International House (I-House) is home to about 260 students from more than thirty countries. The I-House community provides a social atmosphere where opportunities for significant cross-cultural exchange between American and international students are plentiful. International learning is fostered through formal programs including current affairs discussions, cultural nights, and a community newsletter. Upper-division undergraduates from all six colleges, graduate students, faculty, and researchers are eligible to live in International House, located in the Eleanor Roosevelt College townhouses. Demand is very high for this special program and there is often a waitlist. Spaces in International House are not guaranteed and admission requires a separate application.

Student media
Triton Television

Triton TV is UC San Diego’s first and only student-run film studio and TV station. The station offers UCSD students the opportunity to work in a professional production environment with no prior experience required. Members are trained from scratch and provided with the equipment and education needed to produce excellent videos. Triton TV is an AS service and offers training in multiple areas of production.

KSDT

KSDT is a student-run radio station located on the campus of the University of California, San Diego. The station has existed since 1967, but has taken many different forms since then. In its current configuration, KSDT broadcasts solely via streaming MP3 on the internet. KSDT is a student run organization providing music and activities for the UCSD community and the greater World Wide Web—striving to promote independent music not available from mainstream sources and work to help the San Diego Community.

In addition to producing radio shows, KSDT maintains and operates studio facilities providing practice space for undiscovered area bands. KSDT uses its contacts in the music industry to produce campus appearances by KSDT approved acts producing live Studio Sessions for up and coming independent bands.

Athletics


UCSD offers student participation in a wide range of sports including swimming, water polo, soccer, volleyball, crew, track and field athletics, fencing, basketball, golf, cross country, softball, baseball, and tennis. UCSD participates at the NCAA's Division II (DII) level in the California Collegiate Athletic Association, although water polo, fencing, men's crew and men's volleyball compete at the Division I level. Before joining DII in 2000, the school participated at the Division III level and won numerous national championships.

UCSD does not have an NCAA football team.

Until the 2007-2008 school year, UCSD was the only DII school that did not offer athletic scholarships. In 2005, the NCAA created a rule that made it mandatory for DII programs to award athletic grants; a measure was proposed to begin offering $500 "grants-in-aid" to all 600 intercollegiate athletes in order to meet this requirement. In February 2007, a student referendum was passed with the largest vote in UCSD history, authorizing a $329 annual student fee to fund a raise in coaches' salaries, hire more trainers and provide all athletes with a $500 scholarship.

In 2006-2007, UCSD's best season since moving to DII, 19 of 23 athletic programs qualified for post-season competition, including 17 to the NCAA Championships. Eight of those teams finished in the top-5 in the nation.

UCSD fields a number of club sports teams. The UCSD surfing team has won the national title six times and is consistently rated one of the best surfing programs in the nation. The UCSD triathlon team is continually one of the top triathlon teams in the nation. In 2008, the women's triathlon team won the US collegiate national championship and UCSD athlete Amanda Felder was the Overall Nation Champion. UCSD also has sport clubs in badminton, baseball, cycling, dancesport, dance team, equestrian, ice hockey, lacrosse, roller hockey, rugby union, sailing, soccer, snow skiing, table tennis, ultimate, volleyball, water polo, and waterskiing.

The National Collegiate Scouting Association (NCSA) 2008 Collegiate Power Rankings rate colleges and universities comprehensively based on student-athlete graduation rates, academic strength and athletic prowess of the university. The institutions posted in the 2007 Power Rankings represent less than 6% of colleges and universities across the nation. UCSD placed 4th on the overall ranking list, trailing behind Williams College, Amherst College, and Duke University, and first on the Division II list.

Faculty
The university employs 1,205 faculty members, including six Nobel Laureates, four MacArthur fellows, three National Medal of Science laureates, and two Fields medalists. UCSD faculty also include 146 Guggenheim Fellows. UCSD ranks sixth in the nation in terms of United States National Academy of Sciences membership. UCSD has a total of 20 Nobel Laureates affiliated with it. UCSD's visual arts faculty has included performance artist Allan Kaprow and famed duo, David Antin and Eleanor Antin.

Alumni
Over 150,000 alumni are associated with UCSD. Notable alumni include Bill Atkinson and Bud Tribble, members of the Apple Macintosh development team; biotechnology pioneers David Goeddel and Craig Venter, and Nobel Prize winners Susumu Tonegawa (Physiology or Medicine), Venki Ramakrishnan (Chemistry) and Bruce Beutler (Physiology or Medicine). Eleanor Mariano, the first Filipino-American to reach the rank of Rear Admiral in the United States Navy and first female director of the White House Medical Unit, received her BS in Biology cum laude in 1977. A number of science fiction authors including Gregory Benford, David Brin and Kim Stanley Robinson earned PhDs at UCSD; cartoon animation producer Mike Judge is also an alum. Robert Buckley, who stars as Clay on The CW television show One Tree Hill graduated from UCSD with a degree in Economics. The Kite Runner's Khaled Hosseini is also a UCSD alum as well as Dileep Rao, one of the stars of the hit blockbuster movies Avatar and Inception. Rao spoke at the 2010 Convocation Dinner as he kicked off UCSD's 50th Anniversary Celebration. The three members of the popular Asian American filmmaking group Wong Fu Productions, Ted Fu, Phillip Wang, and Wesley Chan all graduated from UCSD as well. Anna Marie Caballero is a former member of the California State Assembly and had previously served as the Mayor and Council member of Salinas, California. Chad Butler, drummer and co-founding member of the Grammy Award winning San Diego area based rock band Switchfoot.

San Diego Trolley
Sandag and the Metropolitan Transit System are currently in a major development to bring San Diego Trolley service to the local area. The project will extend the existing  Blue Line  north from Downtown San Diego to UCSD and the University City Area. The extension will give the UCSD campus two trolley stations, East and West. One major goal of the project is to ease traffic and parking on the campus and to make it quick and convenient for students. There is also a proposed station at the VA hospital just south of UCSD. Construction is set to begin in 2014, and is scheduled to be completed by 2017, and is expected to begin trolley service in 2018. This project was first proposed in 1994 but as of 2012 is finally underway.