Around 37,000 students attend UC San Diego, the lion’s share of which are undergraduates, with the school offering over 200 undergraduate and graduate degree programs. The origins of UC San Diego go back to the early 20th century and the founding of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the first permanent marine science facility in the Western hemisphere and a pioneer in climate change theory.
UC San Diego is a public research university organized into six undergraduate residential colleges, five academic divisions (arts and humanities, biological sciences, engineering, physical sciences and social sciences), and five graduate and professional schools (Rady School of Management, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, School of Global Policy and Strategy, UC San Diego School of Medicine and Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences).
UC San Diego has been ranked in the top five best public universities in the world, and of its current academic staff, 29 have been elected to the National Academy of Engineering, 70 to the National Academy of Sciences, 45 to the Institute of Medicine and 110 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Students can get involved in all the cultural activities, clubs, societies, and sports that you would expect from a top-ranking US university. There are over 550 student organizations and 38 national and local Greek organizations hosted on campus, with 20 percent of students joining fraternities and sororities.
Highlights of student life include the Price Center (PC), a social hub comprising multiple restaurants, the central bookstore, a cinema, and office space. The Ché Café is a student worker cooperative, social center and vegan café which is also a prominent underground music venue. In the past, bands including Green Day, Bon Iver, and Bright Eyes have played here.