UCSB Points of Pride

UC Santa Barbara ranks among higher-education leaders in the United States and Canada as one of only 62 research-intensive institutions elected to membership in the prestigious Association of American 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.
Recognition of academic quality takes many forms. One of the most prestigious is support from the National Science Foundation (NSF). UCSB is home to 12 national centers and institutes, including eight that are sponsored by the NSF.
Demand for admission to UCSB is keen. The campus received a record 55,871 applications for undergraduate admission for fall 2008, which is 7,143 more than last year. Of the 47,025 freshman applicants for the entering class, 14,584 or 31 percent have a high-school Grade Point Average (GPA) of 4.0 or higher. The average GPA of all freshman applicants is 3.71, identical to last year's record level.
UCSB 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.
UCSB was selected for one of the first California Institutes for Science and Innovation. The California NanoSystems Institute, a research partnership between UCSB and UCLA, is producing scientific advances in fields critical to the future of California's economy.
The UCSB Libraries have opened up the world of historic sound recordings by mounting thousands of digitized cylinder recordings on an immensely popular new Web site: http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu
UCSB's Center for Film, Television, and New Media was recently named for Emmy Award-winning television producers Marcy Carsey and Dick Wolf in recognition of their generous support for the construction of a new facility for the innovative center.
UCSB has been named one of the "hottest" colleges in the nation twice in the past five years by the popular Newsweek guide to top colleges.
U.S. News and World Report's guide, "America's Best Colleges," the most widely read college guide in the country, ranks UCSB number 13 among all public universities.