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- 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 11 national
centers and institutes, including eight that are sponsored
by the NSF.
- Demand for admission to UCSB is keen. Fall 2009 applications from prospective freshmen and transfer students totaled 54,758. Of the 44,673 applicants for the entering class, 13,655, 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. Over the past two years, freshman applicants have increased by 9.2 percent.
- External research support, which is considered the lifeblood of a premier research university, reached a record $194 million in fiscal 2008, an increase of $18 million over the previous year and twice the level of a decade ago.
- UCSB is leading the MacArthur Foundation’s $10-million national program on the law and neuroscience, the first systematic effort to bridge the fields of law and neuroscience in considering how courts should deal with new brain-scanning techniques as they apply to matters of law.
- The university 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 marine scientists played a key role in developing Ocean in Google Earth, which enables users to dive beneath the sea in Marine Protected Areas worldwide: earth.google.com/ocean/
- A new interdisciplinary Institute for Energy Efficiency established by the College of Engineering is bringing together 50 campus researchers with related expertise to develop new energy-saving technologies.
- UCSB has joined forces with research institutions across Southern California to advance stem cell research by establishing the Southern California Stem Cell Scientific Collaboration. Other members are the University of Southern California, Childrens Hospital Los Angeles, City of Hope, the California Institute of Technology, and the House Ear Institute.
- The campus is home to the California NanoSystems Institute, one of the first California Institutes for Science and Innovation. A research partnership with UCLA, the institute is on its way to creating revolutionary new materials, devices, and systems that will enhance virtually every aspect of our lives.
- 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
- Twice this decade, UCSB has been named one of the "hottest" colleges in the nation 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 11 among all public universities.
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