UCSD Today

As a research university:

Although only 40 years old, the University of California, San Diego ranks tenth in the USA in the excellence of its graduate programs and the quality of its faculty, according to the most highly-regarded ranking of universities, released in 1995 by the National Research Council.
A 2000 survey of graduate programs by U.S. News and World Report ranks the UCSD School of Medicine 23rd of medical schools in the nation, the Irwin and Joan Jacobs School of Engineering as 15th in the U.S., the Department of Bioengineering as 3rd in the U.S., the Department of Theater and Dance as 3rd in the nation, and the Department of Political Science as 10th in the nation.
The 1997 U.S. News and World Report ranks UCSD 7th best in the excellence of all state-supported colleges and universities in the nation. The ranking was based upon a nation-wide survey of 1,400 four-year schools.
In a recent objective study of academic strengths among U.S. research universities conducted by Johns Hopkins' researchers, UCSD's faculty ranked tops in the nation among public institutions in science. When the private and public science rankings are merged, UCSD is fourth in the nation behind Caltech, Stanford, and MIT.
UCSD numbers five Nobel Laureates on its faculty, and of all public universities in the USA, has the second highest number of faculty elected to the prestigious national academies.
UCSD ranks 5th in the nation and first in the University of California system according to the amount of federal research dollars the campus spends on research and development.
UCSD ranked 16th among the nation's top 100 colleges and universities in graduating Hispanics at the doctorate degree level, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

As an educational institution:

UCSD is home to approximately 20,212 undergraduate, graduate, and medical students.
Out of almost 36,00 freshmen applications received for fall 2000, UCSD enrolled 3,122 new freshmen and 1,111 transfer students.
For the fall 2000 freshmen class, the average GPA and SAT composite scores were 3.99 and 1,259, respectively.
UCSD is academically diverse, with students of color representing approximately 47 percent of the total undergraduate enrollment figure. Men and women are nearly equally represented among undergraduates, and 96 percent of all undergraduates are from California.
In terms of the presence of foreign scholars on campus, UC San Diego was ranked fifth in the nation by the Chronicle of Higher Education. UC San Diego also sent more students abroad than any other single university in the United States.

As an economic force:

As the region's third largest employer, UCSD's annual revenues are $1.5 billion, and the annual payroll for its 19, 347 employees is $660 million.
UCSD attracted an estimated $920 million from outside the San Diego region and channeled it into the local economy last year. These recycled dollars alone created an overall impact of $2.2 billion, which translates into 61,000 jobs locally and 70,000 nationally.
To date, some 150 San Diego companies have been founded by faculty and graduates of UC San Diego, or on technology that was developed on campus. At least 63 of those 150 are biomedical companies.
For every dollar the State of California invests in UCSD, the unversity generates five more -- and reinvests them in local, state, and national economies