University

UC Santa Barbara

The Visitor Center at UC Santa Barbara provides admission presentations and campus tours for approximately 40,000 guests each year.

The Visitor Center is located on the first floor of the Student Affairs Administrative Services Building (SAASB), adjacent to the Mesa Parking Structure (parking permit required).

Spend an hour with a UCSB Counselor to learn about the UC application process for the class entering in Fall 2012. We will go step by step through the application, explaining what is required of a freshman applicant (from how to enter a student's academics to the dreaded personal statement). Select one of the 10 workshops offered.

Location/Land area

1,055 acres on the California coast about 100 miles northwest of Los Angeles. Office of Admissions 1210 Cheadle Hall University of California Santa Barbara, CA 93106-2014 (805) 893-2881

Faculty Size: 1,086

In addition to five Nobel Prize winners, 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).

Majors, Degrees, and Credentials

More than 200 majors, degrees, and credentials are offered through UCSB's five schools and the Graduate Division.

Major Colleges and Divisions:

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

Top Majors

As of fall, 2010, the following majors were most popular with undergraduates.

Biology Psychology Communication Economics Sociology Political Science Global and International Studies English Environmental Studies History Film and Media Studies Mechanical Engineering

Freshman Applicant Statistics (Fall 2010 Entering Class)

Applicants: 46,720   Admitted: 21,249 (45.5%)   4.10 average GPA 1905 mean SAT I score Enrolled: 3,720   3.92 mean GPA 1817 mean SAT score 44% GPA of 4.0 or above 599 mean Verbal SAT score 617 mean Math SAT score

Transfer Applicant Statistics (Fall 2010 Entering Class)

Applicants: 12,349   Admitted: 6,392 (51.8%)   Enrolled: 1,591   3.34 mean GPA

• UC Santa Barbara ranks among higher-education leaders in the United States and Canada as one of only 61 research-intensive institutions elected to membership in the prestigious Association of American Universities .

• U.S. News and World Report's guide, “America's Best Colleges,” the most widely read college guide in the country, ranks UCSB number 9 among all public universities .

• UCSB's renowned faculty includes five winners of Nobel Prizes for landmark research in chemistry, physics, and economics, and scores of elected members of national and international academies and societies. An alumna of the College of Creative Studies was named 2009 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine.

• Demand for admission to UCSB is keen, and the academic quality and diversity of the applicant class are high. Fall 2011 applications from prospective freshmen and transfer students totaled 63,303, or 7.3 percent more than last year.

• The campus is home to 12 national institutes and centers , including eight that are supported by the National Science Foundation. Among them: the renowned Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics and the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis.

• External support for research , which is considered the lifeblood of a premier research university, totaled a record $222 million in fiscal 2009-10, a 28 percent increase over the previous year. Federal agencies provided $192 million of the total, nearly $58 million more than the preceding year.

• Over half of all graduating seniors collaborate with faculty members on original research or creative projects. The campus nurtures such activities with a program of student grants totaling $200,000 annually.

• The Campaign for UC Santa Barbara has thus far raised more than $613 million to ensure the excellence of the campus and its programs for future generations.

• The Koegel Autism Center at the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education has been recognized by the National Research Council as one of the top 10 state-of-the-art treatment centers for autism in the United States.

• UCSB is leading the MacArthur Foundation's $10-million national program on the law and neuroscience , the first systematic effort to bridge the fields of law and neuroscience in considering how courts should deal with new brain-scanning techniques as they apply to matters of law.

• The university is the editorial headquarters for The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau , a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) project that is publishing definitive scholarly editions of the complete works of naturalist and literary artist Henry David Thoreau. The Thoreau Edition has been designated an NEH “We the People” project because of the importance of Thoreau's writings in American history and culture.

• The UCSB Libraries have opened up the world of historic sound recordings by mounting thousands of digitized cylinder recordings on an immensely popular Web site: http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu .

• The campus is home to the California NanoSystems Institute , one of the first California Institutes for Science and Innovation. A research partnership with UCLA, the institute is on its way to creating revolutionary new materials , devices, and systems that will enhance virtually every aspect of our lives.

• A new interdisciplinary Institute for Energy Efficiency established by the College of Engineering is bringing together more than 50 campus researchers with related expertise to develop new energy-saving technologies . The institute's Center for Energy Efficient Materials was awarded a grant of $19 million by the Department of Energy.

• UC Santa Barbara and the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute have established a joint Center for Nanomedicine to pioneer the development of novel biomedical research technologies for advancing human health .

• Researchers at UC Santa Barbara led by Shuji Nakamura were responsible for a major breakthrough in laser diode development and demonstrated the world's first nonpolar blue-violet laser diodes, which have numerous commercial and medical applications.

• The UCSB laboratory of physicist Paul Hansma is considered the birthplace of practical scanning microscopes, especially atomic force microscopes , which today are ubiquitous in laboratories all over the world.

• UC Santa Barbara is the largest employer in the county and a primary engine of economic activity on the South Coast. More than 80 local companies have been established by UCSB faculty and alumni, and four to seven new companies based on UCSB research are formed every year. In addition, 66 companies on four continents (30 in California) are currently using technologies developed at UCSB.

• Bren Hall, which houses the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, and the Tipton Meeting House at the Sedgwick Natural Reserve are among the “greenest” buildings in the nation , earning LEED Platinum certification — the highest sustainability rating possible — from the U.S. Green Building Council.

• UCSB's pioneering work on climate change is often cited by other researchers. The Institute for Scientific Information recently measured the impact of climate change research citations over a 10-year span and ranked the campus number 7 worldwide.