The University of California - Davis

I would STRONGLY recommend completing your lower-division coursework at a community college, and coming to UC Davis as a junior. The UC Regents has more than DOUBLED the tuition in the last decade. They site budget woes, but they somehow have the funds to build huge new campus facilities to the tune of millions of dollars. Of course, they try to justify this by saying "Oh, we have to meet the needs of students..." How did they manage the last hundred years??? Truth is, they are admitting fewer students now due to insufficient funds. I think it is going to blow up, eventually. Something doesn't add up, and I do not like the direction this school is going.

Bureaucracy aside, UC Davis is a well-respected school, and a Bachelor's degree from here will definitely look good on your resume. The standards in the Mechanical Engineering department are very high. It is NOT easy to maintain a 3.0, and it is VERY HARD to maintain a 3.5. It would help if professors were more accessible. It has gotten better the higher up I've gotten, but my first two quarters here as a junior were pretty rough because I would ask a professor for help during office hours, and the response would be nothing more than "Well just look at the solution I provided!"

It would be nice if the class sizes were smaller. A typical upper-division class size ranges from 60 to 150 students. Contrast this to a community college where a class size of over 30 students is considered large. They break the classes apart for labs, so you will still be able to connect with other students. Another beef I have is that many of these "lecture halls" are tight-fitting sardine cans where they squeeze 75 students into classrooms that appear to be designed for maybe 40 students, maximum. If I had known this ahead of time, I might have kept looking at other schools before settling on this one.

All in all, I have mixed feelings about UC Davis. It's not situated in a ghetto, which is a huge plus. Also, the school has a strong academic reputation, although it is hard to see as a student. There is obviously a lot of baggage associated with this school, but many former UC Davis graduates tell me its worth it.Those are my observations and opinions... Make of them what you will...

2nd Year Male -- Class 2011

Perceived Campus Safety: A, University Resource Use/ spending: C-