The University of California - Davis

Date: Jul 23 2002
Major: Economics (This Major's Salary over time)
At times, I think UCD and its students have inferiority complexes … for one thing, UCD is behind UCLA, Berkeley, and San Diego on the UC hierarchy and a majority of the students considered UCD a back-up choice (after the three schools) rather than a first choice. But UCD has its qualities. Laid-back, quiet college-town of 50,000+, an hour north of San Francisco, two hours south of Lake Tahoe, 15 minutes away from Sacramento. The agricultural dept. (soil science, animal science, etc.) at UCD is considered one of the best in the country. The student body is quite diverse. The campus is growing with new buildings and facilities.

But there are negatives as well. I've been in upper-division (junior-senior level) econ classes with 200 students, and this set-up is repeated in many other majors at UCD. Lower-division classes (freshman-soph) usually have 200+ students for "popular" classes like introductory biology, chemistry, nutrition, psychology, etc. UCD accepts too many students … look at acceptance rates compared to other UCD schools. I think this somewhat diminishes the quality of the school since, no offense, some of my peers were questionable in their intellectual pursuits. To be honest, I sit around in class and wonder, "How did some of these people get into UCD." You get the picture. Another thing is the town of Davis itself. You either like it or hate it. It's small, almost rural in nature, and there's endless stretches of fields and farmland in its 30-mile vicinity. Sure nearby Vacaville has a population over 100K people, but Davis is considered COWTOWN USA for a reason. Climate is off-and-on. Temperature during May-August will hit anywhere from 90 to 110 degrees. Dry, sun-parched heat! The weather is unpredictable. Over the past year we've had: snow (very rare), tornado (WTF!), 110 degrees, 50 mph winds. There's really not much to do in Sacramento either … you can scour the entire city and its offerings within a couple days. Academically, the school has a pretty solid reputation, but some depts. are relatively weak, like engineering. But again, the school offers hundreds of majors to choose from, and most students jump around from major to major throughout their first two or three years. The quarter system is good if you enjoy 10-week courses but because of the this, most classes tend to "repeat" themselves over and over again.

Overall, I would seriously recommend visiting this school and possibly sitting in a couple classes before thinking about attending UCD. Some students have grown to love the atmosphere UCD provides whereas others have grown to dislike the "country" environment and the overpopulation. From previous posters above, you can tell that there is no clear-cut opinion on UCD.