University of California-San Diego Reviews of Bachelor's in Biology

"UC San Diego is a beautiful campus: spread out nicely, lush greenery, and ocean views. The faculty are all very knowledgable, and most in my experience are approachable and care about your education. The biology program/department at UCSD is world class, and houses one of the best medical schools in the world. One thing I would have to say the school lacks however, is school spirit. Compared to the other top UC's, UCSD has almost zero school pride. No attendance at sporting events, campus events are lackluster with little time or effort put in on the AS side. If you are looking for an academically strong school, with a beautiful location, but do not care whatsoever about having a social life or school pride, then UCSD is the place to be. I overall made amazing friends there and still had a blast, you just have to try harder than some other UC's in the system."

"UCSD is a great school -- for engineers and researchers. Many of the classes are taught by research professors, who are very intelligent but they seemed to be distant from undergraduate students. Of course, this doesn't apply to all the professors at the school, but I felt like it was hard to approach them or keep up with them in lecture (especially if they started going on tangents). I do not regret choosing to go to this school. I just wished I wasn't one of the hundred of students sitting in a large lecture hall scrambling to take down notes while trying to comprehend the materials."

"The University of California San Diego has wonderful biology, engineering, and computer science programs. The faculty is great, and they are passionate about the topics that they are teaching. Unfortunately, the lecture halls are quite large, and it is common to have 400 classmates! There are many extracurricular activities that you can become involved with including several organizations, research opportunities, becoming an undergraduate teachers assistant, and even more. The campus environment is relaxed, and the weather is wonderful. The teaching quality is good, though I had to learn the material on my own because the upper division courses were fast paced."

"UCSD is well renowned for its competitiveness, rigor, and prestige. It offers a lot of opportunities in terms of jobs, internships, volunteering, student organizations, etc. However, the class sizes can get extremely large, and everything is really expensive. The student body is lacking in diversity."

"The University of California, San Diego is a great place to attend for undergraduate studies. The school is located in a beautiful part of San Diego and offers many things to do around the city. UCSD was a wonderful place to study biology and other sciences. They have excellent professors who are intelligent, well-known, have great research backgrounds, and can give you a great education and opportunities as a student. The opportunities are there for students to obtain internships, help with research in biology labs, and network with people in the field. The class sizes are very large for most science classes, with an average of 300 students to one professor. However, there are separate discussion classes with 15-20 students led by a graduate student in addition to main lectures. This was an effective way of learning in both a large setting and personalized setting. The variety of classes available and hands-on access we had in our classes was wonderful. I would highly recommend going to UCSD for undergraduate studies. It is an academically challenging school, but well worth the effort to have a great education."

"Loved going to UCSD and the opportunity to work with well-renowned scientists in their respective fields. If you study in the biology department, the bureaucracy can be challenging to deal with, so make sure you are on top of everything (especially if you plan to apply study-abroad courses to your core requirements). While I was there, the Environmental Science department was much smaller and easier to work with; I did my minor in Marine Science through the ESYS department. I did all of my independent study projects at Scripps Oceanography and loved it there! The faculty were incredibly knowledgeable, and willing to work with undergraduates on projects. These projects later helped me get into graduate school! If you're looking for a school that is really into athletics or is a party school, this is not the place for you. In terms of a great education - I highly recommend UCSD."

"Beautiful campus, many good teachers though most had strong accents that could be tricky to understand at first, great sports opportunities for non-college athletes, poor college advising but advising within a specific department (such as biology) was hit-or-miss (sometimes good), difficult to get housing on-campus, many students that are not very social"

"Huge campus will take some getting used to, but theres plenty of hidden places to explore. Great opportunities to interact/work with professors are available, but will require some initiative on the part of the student. Weather is great and the beach is 5 minutes away. What more can you ask for?"

"I thoroughly enjoyed my time spent during my undergraduate with the biological sciences faculty and peers. The faculty members were very knowledgable and great educators."