| I had to make this exact same decision (among others) five years ago. Background: I was born and raised in Los Angeles, living less than 20 minutes from UCLA. My mother attended UCLA and my father works at UCLA as an accountant. As you can see, we were very tied to UCLA and LA. I chose UCSD and am very happy I did. A major factor for my choice was location. I wanted to get out of LA and didn't like the UCLA area at all. Visiting UCLA always makes me feel frantic and a little unsafe in areas. I absolutely love San Diego, though. There is a lot to do and I unfortunately don't have time to write a detailed post about the social life. As a quick note, though, I have decided to stay down in San Diego and hope to live the rest of my life here -- it's really that great. As for academics, UCSD and UCLA are very comparable for Engineering and Computer Science. I would personally rank UCSD higher because many of my engineering high school friends that went to UCSD have started successful careers while a few UCLA friends have had trouble, but this is only a small set of people. Finally, everyone will tell you UCSD is not a social school, you'll have problems meeting people, etc, etc. I was a pretty anti-social guy in high school and was a little worried about this. As for my actual experience, it couldn't be farther than what everyone said. UCSD seems to offer a much more casual, relaxed social experience while UCLA (from my visits) offered a much more party-like atmosphere. Personally, I prefer the former and never had a problem meeting new people. Overall, I am very happy I chose UCSD. It gave me a great education, I met a lot of wonderful people, and I have a great career ahead of me. If you do choose UCSD, go to Marshall (for the best on-campus housing and dining at OVT and pretty easy GEs) or Muir (for the easiest GEs but crappy on-campus housing) |