University of California


The University of California is a public research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, and Santa Cruz, along with numerous research centers and academic abroad centers.
The University of California was founded on March 23, 1868, and operated in Oakland before moving to Berkeley in 1873. Over time, several branches and satellite programs were established. In March 1951, the University of California began to reorganize itself into something distinct from its campus in Berkeley, with Robert Gordon Sproul remaining in place as President, but Clark Kerr becoming the first Chancellor of UC Berkeley, and Raymond B. Allen becoming the first Chancellor of UCLA. However, the 1951 reorganization was stalled by resistance from Sproul and his allies, and it was not until Kerr succeeded Sproul as President that UC was able to evolve into a system from 1957 to 1960. At that time, chancellors were appointed for more campuses and each was granted some degree of greater autonomy.
The University of California currently has 10 campuses, a combined student body of 285,216 students, 22,700 faculty members, 154,900 staff members and over 2.0 million living alumni. Its newest campus in Merced opened in fall 2005. Nine campuses enroll both undergraduate and graduate students; one campus, UC San Francisco, enrolls only graduate and professional students in the medical and health sciences. In addition, the UC Hastings College of Law, located in San Francisco, is legally affiliated with UC, but other than sharing its name is entirely autonomous from the rest of the system. Under the California Master Plan for Higher Education, the University of California is a part of the state's three-system public higher education plan, which also includes the California State University system and the California Community Colleges System. It is governed by a Board of Regents whose autonomy from the rest of the state government is protected by the state constitution.
The University of California also manages or co-manages three national laboratories for the U.S. Department of Energy: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Collectively, the colleges, institutions, and alumni of the University of California make it the most comprehensive and advanced postsecondary educational system in the world, responsible for nearly $50 billion per year of economic impact. UC campuses have large numbers of distinguished faculty in almost every academic discipline, with UC faculty and researchers having won at least 64 Nobel Prizes as of 2017.

History

In 1849, the state of California ratified its first constitution, which contained the express objective of creating a complete educational system including a state university. Taking advantage of the Morrill Land-Grant Acts, the California Legislature established an Agricultural, Mining, and Mechanical Arts College in 1866. However, it existed only on paper, as a placeholder to secure federal land-grant funds.
Meanwhile, Congregational minister Henry Durant, an alumnus of Yale, had established the private Contra Costa Academy, on June 20, 1853, in Oakland, California. The initial site was bounded by Twelfth and Fourteenth Streets and Harrison and Franklin Streets in downtown Oakland. In turn, the Academy's trustees were granted a charter in 1855 for a College of California, though the College continued to operate as a college preparatory school until it added college-level courses in 1860. The College's trustees, educators, and supporters believed in the importance of a liberal arts education, but ran into a lack of interest in liberal arts colleges on the American frontier.
In November 1857, the College's trustees began to acquire various parcels of land facing the Golden Gate in what is now Berkeley for a future planned campus outside of Oakland. But first, they needed to secure the College's water rights by buying a large farm to the east. In 1864, they organized the College Homestead Association, which borrowed $35,000 to purchase the land, plus another $33,000 to purchase 160 acres of land to the south of the future campus. The Association subdivided the latter parcel and started selling lots with the hope it could raise enough money to repay its lenders and also create a new college town. But sales of new homesteads fell short.
Governor Frederick Low favored the establishment of a state university based upon the University of Michigan plan, and thus in one sense may be regarded as the founder of the University of California. At the College of California's 1867 commencement exercises, where Low was present, Benjamin Silliman, Jr. criticized Californians for creating a state polytechnic school instead of a real university. That same day, Low reportedly first suggested a merger of the already-functional College of California with the nonfunctional state college, and went on to participate in the ensuing negotiations. On October 9, 1867, the College's trustees reluctantly agreed to join forces with the state college to their mutual advantage, but under one condition—that there not be simply an "Agricultural, Mining, and Mechanical Arts College", but a complete university, within which the assets of the College of California would be used to create a College of Letters. Accordingly, the Organic Act, establishing the University of California, was introduced as a bill by Assemblyman John W. Dwinelle on March 5, 1868, and after it was duly passed by both houses of the state legislature, it was signed into state law by Governor Henry H. Haight on March 23, 1868. However, as legally constituted, the new University was not an actual merger of the two colleges, but was an entirely new institution which merely inherited certain objectives and assets from each of them. The University of California's second president, Daniel Coit Gilman, opened its new campus in Berkeley in September 1873. "Affiliation" meant UC and its affiliates would "share the risk in launching new endeavors in education." The affiliates shared the prestige of the state university's brand, and UC agreed to award degrees in its own name to their graduates on the recommendation of their respective faculties, but the affiliates were otherwise managed independently by their own boards of trustees, charged their own tuition and fees, and maintained their own budgets separate from the UC budget. It was through the process of affiliation that UC was able to claim it had medical and law schools in San Francisco within a decade of its founding.
In 1879, California adopted its second and current constitution, which included unusually strong language to ensure UC's independence from the rest of the state government. This had lasting consequences for the Hastings College of the Law, which had been separately chartered and affiliated in 1878 by an act of the state legislature at the behest of founder Serranus Clinton Hastings. After a falling out with his own handpicked board of directors, the founder persuaded the state legislature in 1883 and 1885 to pass new laws to place his law school under the direct control of the Board of Regents. In 1886, the Supreme Court of California declared those newer acts to be unconstitutional because the clause protecting UC's independence in the 1879 state constitution had stripped the state legislature of the ability to amend the 1878 act. To this day, the Hastings College of the Law remains an affiliate of UC, maintains its own board of directors, and is not governed by the Regents.
In contrast, Toland Medical College and later, the dental, pharmacy, and nursing schools in SF were affiliated with UC through written agreements, and not statutes invested with constitutional importance by court decisions. In the early 20th century, the Affiliated Colleges agreed to submit to the Regents' governance at the urging of President Benjamin Ide Wheeler, who had come to recognize the problems inherent in the existence of independent entities that shared the UC brand but over which UC had no real control. While Hastings remained independent, the Affiliated Colleges were able to integrate with one another under the supervision of the UC President and Regents, and evolved into the health sciences campus known today as the University of California, San Francisco.
In August 1882, the California State Normal School opened a second school in Los Angeles to train teachers for the growing population of Southern California. In 1887, the Los Angeles school was granted its own board of trustees independent of the San Jose school, and in 1919, the state legislature transferred it to UC control and renamed it the Southern Branch of the University of California. In 1927, it became the University of California at Los Angeles; the "at" would be replaced with a comma in 1958.
Los Angeles surpassed San Francisco in the 1920 census to become the most populous metropolis in California, and its residents sought more prestige and autonomy for their campus. UCLA became the first UC site outside of Berkeley to achieve de jure coequal status with the Berkeley campus in March 1951, when the Regents approved a reorganization plan under which both the Berkeley and Los Angeles campuses would be supervised by chancellors reporting to the UC President. However, the 1951 plan was severely flawed; it was overly vague about how the chancellors were to become the "executive heads" of their campuses. Due to stubborn resistance from President Sproul and several vice presidents and deans—who simply carried on as before—the chancellors ended up as glorified provosts with limited control over academic affairs while the President and the Regents retained de facto control over everything else. Upon becoming President in October 1957, Clark Kerr supervised UC's rapid transformation into a true public university system through a series of proposals adopted unanimously by the Regents from 1957 to 1960. Kerr's reforms included expressly granting all campus chancellors the full range of executive powers, privileges, and responsibilities which Sproul had denied to Kerr himself, as well as the radical decentralization of a tightly-knit bureaucracy in which all lines of authority had always run directly to the President at Berkeley or to the Regents themselves.
During the 20th century, UC acquired additional satellite locations which, like Los Angeles, were all subordinate to administrators at the Berkeley campus. California farmers lobbied for UC to perform applied research responsive to their immediate needs; in 1905, the Legislature established a "University Farm School" at Davis and in 1907 a "Citrus Experiment Station" at Riverside as adjuncts to the College of Agriculture at Berkeley. In 1912, UC acquired a private oceanography laboratory in San Diego, which had been founded nine years earlier by local business promoters working with a Berkeley professor. In 1944, UC acquired Santa Barbara State College from the California State Colleges, the descendants of the State Normal Schools. In 1958, the Regents began promoting these locations to general campuses, thereby creating UCSB, UC Davis, UC Riverside, UC San Diego, and UCSF. Each campus was also granted the right to have its own chancellor upon promotion. In response to California's continued population growth, UC opened two additional general campuses in 1965, with UC Irvine opening in Irvine and UC Santa Cruz opening in Santa Cruz. The youngest campus, UC Merced opened in fall 2005 to serve the San Joaquin Valley.
After losing campuses in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara to the University of California system, supporters of the California State College system arranged for the state constitution to be amended in 1946 to prevent similar losses from happening again in the future.
In 1932, Will Keith Kellogg donated his Arabian horse ranch in Pomona, California, to the University of California system. However, the land remained largely unused and ownership was transferred to the California State University system in 1949. Kellogg's old ranch became the California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.
The California Master Plan for Higher Education of 1960 established that UC must admit undergraduates from the top 12.5% of graduating high school seniors in California. Prior to the promulgation of the Master Plan, UC was to admit undergraduates from the top 15%. UC does not currently adhere to all tenets of the original Master Plan, such as the directives that no campus was to exceed total enrollment of 27,500 students and that public higher education should be tuition-free for California residents. Five campuses, Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, and San Diego each have current total enrollment at over 30,000.
After the state electorate severely limited long-term property tax revenue by enacting Proposition 13 in 1978, UC was forced to make up for the resulting collapse in state financial support by imposing a variety of fees which were tuition in all but name. On November 18, 2010, the Regents finally gave up on the longstanding legal fiction that UC does not charge tuition by renaming the Educational Fee to "Tuition." As part of its search for funds during the 2000s and 2010s, UC quietly began to admit higher percentages of highly accomplished students from other states and countries, but was forced to reverse course in 2015 in response to the inevitable public outcry and start admitting more California residents.

Academics

In 2016, UC researchers and faculty were responsible for 1,745 inventions, and UC controls over 12,200 active patents. On average, UC researchers create five new inventions per day.
Seven of UC's ten campuses are members of the Association of American Universities. Collectively, the system counts among its faculty :
As of October 2018, the following data are taken from List of Nobel laureates by university affiliation and are not the official count from University of California.
CampusNr. of winnersNr. of winners world rankAge of school
Berkeley1073150
San Diego272658
Los Angeles243199
Santa Barbara145674
San Francisco9>73143
Irvine7>7351
Davis3>73115
Riverside3>7364
Santa Cruz0>7353
Merced0>7313

Academic organization

Davis, Los Angeles, Riverside, and Santa Barbara all followed Berkeley's example by aggregating the majority of arts, humanities, and science departments into a relatively large College of Letters and Science. Therefore, at Berkeley, Davis, Los Angeles, and Santa Barbara, their respective College of Letters and Science is by far the single largest academic unit on each campus—the one at Los Angeles is the largest academic unit in the entire UC system. Riverside later separated the natural sciences and kept only social sciences grouped with arts and humanities, an example followed by Merced at its founding.
Due to President Kerr's interest in not reproducing the impersonal undergraduate experience often seen in such gigantic academic units, San Diego and Santa Cruz both implemented residential college systems inspired by British models and grouped most academic departments into a small number of broadly defined divisions which are all independent of the colleges.
Finally, Irvine is organized into 13 schools and San Francisco is organized into four schools, all of which are relatively narrow in scope.

Academic calendar

Eight campuses operate on the quarter system, while two are on the semester system. However, all five law schools operate on the semester system, as does the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

UC Libraries

At 40.8 million items, the University of California library system contains one of the largest collections in the world. Each campus maintains its own library catalog and also participates in the systemwide union catalog, MELVYL. Besides on-campus libraries, the UC system also maintains two regional library facilities, which each accept older items from all UC campus libraries in their respective region. As of 2019, Northern Regional Library Facility is home to 7.4 million items, while Southern Regional Library Facility is home to 6.5 million items.

Research

Seven of the campuses are members of the Association of American Universities. In 2006 the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition awarded the University of California the SPARC Innovator Award for its "extraordinarily effective institution-wide vision and efforts to move scholarly communication forward", including the 1997 founding of the California Digital Library and its 2002 launching of CDL's eScholarship, an institutional repository. The award also specifically cited the widely influential 2005 academic journal publishing reform efforts of UC faculty and librarians in "altering the marketplace" by publicly negotiating contracts with publishers, as well as their 2006 proposal to amend UC's copyright policy to allow open access to UC faculty research. On July 24, 2013 the UC Academic Senate adopted an Open Access Policy, mandating that all UC faculty produced research with a publication agreement signed after that date be first deposited in UC's eScholarship open access repository.
University of California systemwide research on the SAT exam found that, after controlling for familial income and parental education, so-called achievement tests known as the SAT II had 10 times more predictive ability of college aptitude than the SAT I.

Governance

All University of California campuses except Hastings College of the Law are governed by the Regents of the University of California as required by the Constitution of the State of California. Eighteen regents are appointed by the governor for 12-year terms. One member is a student appointed for a one-year term. There are also seven members—the governor, lieutenant governor, speaker of the State Assembly, State Superintendent of Public Instruction, president and vice president of the alumni associations of UC, and the UC president. The Academic Senate, made up of faculty members, is empowered by the regents to set academic policies. In addition, the system-wide faculty chair and vice-chair sit on the Board of Regents as non-voting members.
Originally, the president was directly in charge of the first campus, Berkeley. In turn, other UC locations were treated as off-site departments of the Berkeley campus. In March 1951, the regents reorganized the university so that day-to-day "chief executive officer" functions for the Berkeley and Los Angeles campuses were transferred in 1952 to chancellors who were entrusted with a high degree of autonomy. As noted above, the regents promoted five additional UC locations to campuses and allowed them to have chancellors of their own in a series of decisions from 1958 to 1964, and the three campuses added since then have also been run by chancellors. In turn, all chancellors report as equals to the University of California President. Today, the UC Office of the President and the Office of the Secretary and Chief of Staff to the Regents of the University of California share an office building in downtown Oakland that serves as the UC system's headquarters.

UC presidents

On August 13, 2007, President Dynes announced that he would step down effective June 2008, or until his replacement was selected. However, he also announced that Provost Wyatt Hume would take over as the system's chief operating officer, effective immediately. Three state lawmakers had publicly demanded his resignation for his handling of the executive pay compensation scandal that stemmed from UC system Provost M. R. C. Greenwood's violation of UC conflict-of-interest rules.
Incoming President Mark Yudof took over on June 16, 2008. Yudof was succeeded by Homeland Security Secretary and former Governor of Arizona Janet Napolitano, the first woman to hold the office of UC President. On July 7, 2020, Dr. Michael V. Drake was selected as the 21st president of the University of California system, making him the first Black president to hold the office in UC’s 152-year history. He is scheduled to take office on August 1.

Finances

The State of California currently spends nearly $3 billion on the UC system, funding approximately 43.3% of the system. In 1980, the state funded 86.8% of the UC budget. While state funding has somewhat recovered, as of 2019 state support still lags behind even recent historic levels when adjusted for inflation.
In May 2004, UC President Robert C. Dynes and CSU Chancellor Charles B. Reed struck a private deal, called the "Higher Education Compact", with Governor Schwarzenegger. They agreed to slash spending by about a billion dollars in exchange for a funding formula lasting until 2011. The agreement calls for modest annual increases in state funds, private fundraising to help pay for basic programs, and large student fee hikes, especially for graduate and professional students. A detailed analysis of the Compact by the Academic Senate "Futures Report" indicated, despite the large fee increases, the University core budget did not recover to 2000 levels. Undergraduate student fees have risen 90% from 2003 to 2007. In 2011, for the first time in UC's history, student fees exceeded contributions from the State of California.
The First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco ruled in 2007 that the University of California owed nearly $40 million in refunds to about 40,000 students who were promised that their tuition fees would remain steady, but were hit with increases when the state ran short of money in 2003.
In September 2019, the University of California announced it will divest its $83 billion in endowment and pension funds from the fossil fuel industry, citing ‘financial risk’.

Faculty pay

Faculty compensation is comparable with institutions of similar academic ranking but slightly higher than in the California State University system. According to the 2015–2016 payscale, the following pay ranges apply per academic year:
PositionSalary range
Lecturer$48,948–$132,204
Senior lecturer$87,528–$132,204
Assistant professor$59,500–$77,200
Associate professor$73,800–$93,300
Full professor$86,800–$158,400

Note that the distinction between "academic year" and "fiscal year" salaries is important. Academic year salaries are for those whose work covers a standard 9-month academic calendar; fiscal year salaries are extrapolations of the academic year salary to cover the entire fiscal year for those who provide full-year service. Fiscal year salaries are computed by using the monthly rate of the academic year salary and multiplying by 11.
The UC system provides for merit pay higher than the nominal maximum of a salary range. However, once pay achieves a high threshold, it requires either presidential or regental approval.

Criticism and controversies

The members of the UC governing structure have been criticized for confusion about their roles and responsibilities and for enjoying controversial perks.
In 2008, the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, the regional accreditor of the UC schools, criticized the UC system for "significant problems in governance, leadership and decision making" and "confusion about the roles and responsibilities of the university president, the regents and the 10 campus chancellors with no clear lines of authority and boundaries".
Besides substantial six-figure incomes, the UC President and all UC chancellors enjoy controversial perks such as free housing in the form of university-maintained mansions. In 1962, Anson Blake's will donated his estate and mansion in Kensington to the University of California's Department of Landscape Architecture. In 1968, the Regents decided to make Blake House the official residence of the UC President. As of 2005, it cost around $300,000 per year to maintain Blake Garden and Blake House; the latter, built in 1926, is a mansion with a view of San Francisco Bay.
All UC chancellors traditionally live for free in a mansion on or near campus that is usually known as University House, where they host social functions attended by guests and donors. UC San Diego's University House was closed from 2004 to 2014 for $10.5 million in renovations paid for by private donors, which were so expensive because the 12,000-square-foot structure sits on top of a sacred Native American cemetery and next to an unstable coastal bluff.
In 2016, university system officials admitted that they monitored all e-mails sent to and from their servers.
In many recent years, the University of California System has faced increased and growing criticism for its high admittance of out-of-state or international students as opposed to in-state, Californian students. In particular, UC Berkeley and UC Los Angeles have been heavily criticized for this phenomenon due to their extraordinarily low acceptance rates compared to other universities in the system. At a Board of Regents meeting in 2015, California Governor Jerry Brown reportedly said on the problem of the UC's relationship with Californian applicants, “And so you got your foreign students and you got your 4.0 folks, but just the kind of ordinary, normal students, you know, that got good grades but weren’t at the top of the heap there – they’re getting frozen out.”

Campuses and rankings

At present, the UC system officially describes itself as a "ten campus" system consisting of the campuses listed below. These campuses are under the direct control of the Regents and President. Only ten campuses are listed on the official UC letterhead.
Although it shares the name and public status of the UC system, the Hastings College of the Law is not controlled by the Regents or President; it has a separate board of directors and must seek funding directly from the Legislature. However, under the California Education Code, the Juris Doctor from Hastings is awarded in the name of the Regents and bears the signature of the President. Furthermore, Education Code section 92201 states that Hastings "is affiliated with the University of California, and is the law department thereof".
Annually, UC campuses are ranked highly by various publications. Six UC campuses rank in the top 50 U.S. National Universities of 2019 by U.S. News & World Report, with UCLA, UC Berkeley, UC Santa Barbara, UC Irvine, UC Davis, and UC San Diego respectively ranked 19th, 22nd, 30th, 33rd, 38th and 41st. All of the UC campuses listed above are considered Public Ivies. Four UC campuses ranked in the top 20 in the U.S. News & World Report Best Global Universities Rankings in 2019, with Berkeley, UCLA, UCSF, and UCSD ranked 4th, 13th, 15th, and 17th respectively.
UC San Francisco is ranked as one of the top universities in biomedicine, both in the country and around the world and the UCSF School of Medicine is ranked 3rd among research-oriented medical schools in the United States and ranked 3rd for primary care by U.S. News and World Report, making it the only medical school to achieve a top-5 ranking in both categories. The UCSF Medical Center is the nation's 5th-ranked hospital and 1st-ranked hospital in California according to U.S. News & World Report.



Student profile

Labor unions

There are a total of about 180,000 employees in the UC system. Most UC employees besides faculty and administration are represented by labor unions. Unions in the UC system include:
Each UC school handles admissions separately, but a student wishing to apply for an undergraduate or transfer admission uses one application for all UCs. Graduate and professional school admissions are handled directly by each department or program to which one applies.
In May 2020, UC system approved plans to suspend requirements of standardized testing scores for admissions until 2024.

Freshmen

Before 1986, students who wanted to apply to UC for undergraduate study could only apply to one campus. Students who were rejected at that campus that otherwise met the UC minimum eligibility requirements were redirected to another campus with available space. Students who didn't want to be redirected were refunded their application fees. In 1986, that system changed to the current "multiple filing" system, in which students can apply to as many or as few UC campuses as they want on one application, paying a fee for each campus. This significantly increased the number of applications to the Berkeley and Los Angeles campuses, since students could choose a campus to attend after they received acceptance letters, without fear of being redirected to a campus they did not want to attend.
The University of California accepts fully eligible students from among the top one-eighth of California public high school graduates through regular statewide admission, or the top 9% of any given high school class through Eligibility in the Local Context. Part of the eligibility process is completion of the A-G requirements in high school. All eligible California high school students who apply are accepted to the University, though not necessarily to the campus of choice. Eligible students who are not accepted to the campus of their choice are placed in the "referral pool", where campuses with open space may offer admission to those students; in 2003, 10% of students who received an offer through this referral process accepted it. In 2007, about 4,100 UC-eligible students who were not offered admission to their campus of choice were referred to UC Riverside or the system's newest campus, UC Merced. In 2015, all UC-eligible students rejected by their campus of choice were redirected to UC Merced, which is now the only campus that has space for all qualified applicants.
The old undergraduate admissions were conducted on a two-phase basis. In the first phase, students were admitted based solely on academic achievement. This accounted for between 50 and 75% of the admissions. In the second phase, the university conducted a "comprehensive review" of the student's achievements, including extracurricular activities, essay, family history, and life challenges, to admit the remainder. Students who did not qualify for regular admission were "admitted by exception"; in 2002, approximately 2% of newly admitted undergraduates were admitted by exception.
The process for determining admissions varies. At some campuses, such as Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz, a point system is used to weight grade point average, SAT Reasoning or ACT scores, and SAT Subject scores, while at San Diego, Berkeley, and Los Angeles, academic achievement is examined in the context of the school and the surrounding community, known as a holistic review.
Race, gender, national origin, and ethnicity have not been used as UC admission criteria since the passing of Proposition 209. However, this information is collected for statistical purposes.

Eligibility in the Local Context

Eligibility in the Local Context, commonly referred to as ELC, is met by applicants ranked in the top 9% of their high school class in terms of performance on an 11-unit pattern of UC-approved high school courses. Beginning with fall 2007 applicants, ELC also requires a UC-calculated GPA of at least 3.0. Fully eligible ELC students are guaranteed a spot at one of UC's undergraduate campuses, though not necessarily at their first-choice campus or even to a campus to which they applied.

Early Academic Outreach Program

The Early Academic Outreach Program was established in 1976 by University of California in response to the State Legislature's recommendation to expand post-secondary opportunities to all of California's students including those who are first-generation, socioeconomically disadvantaged, and English-language learners. As UC's largest academic preparation program, EAOP assists middle and high school students with academic preparation, admissions requirements, and financial aid requirements for higher education. The program designs and provides services to foster students’ academic development, and delivers those services in partnership with other academic preparation programs, schools, other higher education institutions and community/industry partners.

Fall 2019 admitted freshmen


CampusSAT Reading & Writing
SAT Math
SAT Essay
GPA
ACT
ApplicantsAdmitsAdmit rateReferences
Berkeley660 – 750680 – 79016 – 194.15 – 4.3030 – 3587,39314,33616.4%
Davis610 – 710620 – 78015 – 184.00 – 4.2625 – 3378,09230,50839.1%
Irvine600 – 720650 – 79015 – 184.00 – 4.2525 – 3495,56625,39426.6%
Los Angeles670 – 760690 – 79016 – 194.18 – 4.3230 – 35111,30613,74712.4%
Merced510 – 630510 – 66013 – 163.45 – 4.0018 – 2625,41718,45672.6%
Riverside560 – 670570 – 73014 – 173.69 – 4.1122 – 3049,50927,88656.3%
San Diego640 – 730660 – 79015 – 184.03 – 4.2828 – 3499,12532,00532.3%
Santa Barbara630 – 730650 – 79015 – 184.04 – 4.2827 – 3493,44227,71929.7%
Santa Cruz590 – 690610 – 76014 – 173.76 – 4.1625 – 3255,86828,78451.5%

Transfer students

The University of California admits a significant number of transfer students primarily from the California Community Colleges System. Approximately one out of three UC students begin at a community college before graduating. In evaluating a transfer student's application the universities conduct a "comprehensive review" process that includes consideration of grade point averages of the generally required, transferable and or related courses for the intended major. The review may also include consideration of an applicant's enrollment in selective honor courses or programs, extracurricular activities, essay, family history, life challenges, and the location of the student's residence. Different universities emphasize different factors in their evaluations.

Fall of 2018 admitted transfer students

Athletics

For each athletic program see: California Golden Bears, UC Davis Aggies, UC Irvine Anteaters, UCLA Bruins, UC Merced Golden Bobcats, UC Riverside Highlanders, UC San Diego Tritons, UC Santa Barbara Gauchos, UC Santa Cruz Banana Slugs.

Peripheral enterprises

The University of California has a long tradition of involvement in many enterprises that are often geographically or organizationally separate from its general campuses, including national laboratories, observatories, hospitals, continuing education programs, hotels, conference centers, an airport, a seaport, and an art institute.

National laboratories

The University of California directly manages and operates one United States Department of Energy National Laboratory:
UC is a limited partner in two separate private limited liability companies that manage and operate two other Department of Energy national laboratories:
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory conducts unclassified research across a wide range of scientific disciplines with key efforts focused on fundamental studies of the universe, quantitative biology, nanoscience, new energy systems and environmental solutions, and the use of integrated computing as a tool for discovery.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory uses advanced science and technology to ensure that U.S. nuclear weapons remain reliable. LLNL also has major research programs in supercomputing and predictive modeling, energy and environment, bioscience and biotechnology, basic science and applied technology, counter-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and homeland security. It is also home to the most powerful supercomputers in the world.
Los Alamos National Laboratory focuses most of its work on ensuring the reliability of U.S. nuclear weapons. Other work at LANL involves research programs into preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction and US national security, such as protection of the US homeland from terrorist attack.
The UC system's ties to the three laboratories have occasionally sparked controversy and protest, because all three laboratories have been intimately linked with the development of nuclear weapons. During the World War II Manhattan Project, Lawrence Berkeley Lab developed the electromagnetic method for separation of uranium isotopes used to develop the first atomic bombs. The Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore labs have been involved in designing U.S. nuclear weapons from their inception until the shift into stockpile stewardship after the end of the Cold War.
Historically the two national laboratories in Berkeley and Livermore named after Ernest O. Lawrence, have had very close relationships on research projects, as well as sharing some business operations and staff. In fact, LLNL was not officially severed administratively from LBNL until the early 1970s. They also have much deeper ties to the university than the Los Alamos Lab, a fact seen in their respective original names; the University of California Berkeley Radiation Laboratory and the University of California Radiation Laboratory at Livermore.

Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore

The UC system's ties to the labs have so far outlasted all periods of internal controversy. However, in 2003, the U.S. Department of Energy for the first time opened the Los Alamos National Laboratory contract for bidding by other vendors. UC entered into a partnership with Bechtel Corporation, BWXT, and the Washington Group International, and together they created a private company called Los Alamos National Security, LLC. The only other bidder on the LANL contract was a Lockheed Martin Corporation-created company that included, among others, the University of Texas System. In December 2005, a seven-year contract to manage the laboratory was awarded to the Los Alamos National Security, LLC.
On June 1, 2006, the University of California ended its direct involvement in operating Los Alamos National Laboratory. Management of the laboratory was taken over by Los Alamos National Security, LLC. Approximately 95% of the former 10,000 UC employees at LANL were rehired by LANS to continue working at LANL.
On October 1, 2007, the University of California ended its direct involvement in operating the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Management of the laboratory was taken over by Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC, a limited liability company whose members are Bechtel National, the University of California, Babcock & Wilcox, the Washington Division of URS Corporation, Battelle Memorial Institute, and The Texas A&M University System.
Other than UC appointing three members to the two separate boards of directors that oversee LANS and LLNS, UC now has virtually no responsibility for or direct involvement in either LANL or LLNL. UC policies and regulations that apply to UC campuses and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California no longer apply to LANL and LLNL, and the LANL and LLNL directors no longer report to the UC Regents or UC Office of the President.

High-performance networking

The University of California is a founding and charter member of the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California, a nonprofit organization that provides high-performance Internet-based networking to California's K-20 research and education community.

Other national research centers

From September 2003 to July 2016, UC managed a contract valued at more than $330 million to establish and operate a University Affiliated Research Center at the NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Federal Airfield —the largest grant ever awarded the University. UC Santa Cruz managed the UARC for the University of California, with the goal of increasing the science output, safety, and effectiveness of NASA's missions through new technologies and scientific techniques.
Since 2002, the NSF-funded San Diego Supercomputer Center at UC San Diego has been managed by the University of California, which took over from the previous manager, General Atomics.

Observatories

The University of California manages two observatories as a multi-campus research unit headquartered at UC Santa Cruz.
The Astronomy Department at the Berkeley campus manages the Hat Creek Radio Observatory in Shasta County.

Medical centers and schools

The University of California operates five medical centers throughout the state:
Each medical center serves as the primary teaching site for that campus's medical school. UCSF is perennially among the top five programs in both research and primary care, and both UCLA and UC San Diego consistently rank among the top fifteen research schools, according to annual rankings published by U.S. News and World Report. The teaching hospitals affiliated with each school are also highly regarded - the UCSF Medical Center was ranked the number one hospital in California and number 5 in the country by U.S. News and World Report's 2017 Honor Roll for Best Hospitals in the United States. UC also has a sixth medical school—UC Riverside School of Medicine, the only one in the UC system without its own hospital.
In the latter half of the 20th century, the UC hospitals became the cores of full-fledged regional health systems; they were gradually supplemented by many outpatient clinics, offices, and institutes. Three UC hospitals are actually county hospitals that were sold to UC, which means that UC currently plays a major role in providing healthcare to the indigent. The medical hospitals operated by UC Irvine, UC Davis, and UC San Diego, each began as the respective county hospitals of Orange County, Sacramento County, and San Diego County. As of 2016, UC medical centers handle each year about 4.5 million outpatient visits, 356,000 emergency room visits, and 165,000 inpatient admissions.
There are two medical centers that bear the UCLA name, but are not operated by UCLA: Harbor–UCLA Medical Center and Olive View – UCLA Medical Center. They are actually Los Angeles County-operated facilities that UCLA uses as teaching hospitals.

UC Extension

For over a century, the University has operated a continuing education program for working adults and professionals. At present, UC Extension enrolls over 500,000 students each year in over 17,000 courses. One of the reasons for its large size is that UC Extension is a dominant provider of Continuing Legal Education and Continuing Medical Education in California. For example, the systemwide portion of UC Extension operates Continuing Education of the Bar under a joint venture agreement with the State Bar of California.

UC Agriculture and Natural Resources

The University of California division of Agriculture and Natural Resources plays an important role in the State's agriculture industry, as mandated by the UC's legacy as a land-grant institution. In addition to conducting agriculture and Youth development research, every county in the state has a cooperative extension office with county farm advisors. The county offices also support 4-H programs and have nutrition, family and consumer sciences advisors who assist local government. Currently, the division's University of California 4-H Youth Development Program is a national leader in studying thriving in the field of youth development.

UC Natural Reserve System

The NRS was established in January 1965 to provide UC faculty with large areas of land where they could conduct long-term ecosystem research without having to worry about outside disturbances like tourists. Today, the NRS manages 39 reserves that total more than.

Travel and conference facilities

operates the University Airport as a utility airport for air shuttle service in the contractual transportation of university employees and agricultural samples. It is also a public general aviation airport. University Airport's ICAO identifier is KEDU.

Seaport

's Scripps Institution of Oceanography owns a seaport, the Nimitz Marine Facility, which is just south of Shelter Island on Point Loma, San Diego. The port is used as an operating base for all of its oceanographic vessels and platforms.