In just over 50 years as a campus of the University of California, UC Santa Barbara has become an internationally renowned center for teaching and research, distinguished for its interdisciplinary programs and commitment to excellence and innovation. With about 18,000 undergraduates, 2,900 graduate students, and 1,000 faculty members, UCSB is the site of cutting-edge intellectual activity that spans the academic spectrum. UCSB offers a comprehensive array of undergraduate majors and graduate programs through three colleges: Letters and Science, Engineering, and Creative Studies. The University is home to two professional schools: the Graduate School of Education and the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management. A diverse curriculum prepares students for a wide variety of careers, including law, business and medicine.

• 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. UCSB received a record 48,728 applications for undergraduate admission for fall 2007. Of the 40,894 freshmen applicants for the entering class, 12,340 or 30.2 percent have a high-school Grade Point Average (GPA) of 4.0 or higher. The average GPA of all freshmen applicants is 3.71, identical to last year's record level.
  
  
• UCSB 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 was selected for one of the first California Institutes for Science and Innovation. The California NanoSystems Institute, a research partnership between UCSB and UCLA, is producing scientific advances in fields critical to the future of California's economy.
  
  
• 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.
  
  
• UCSB's Center for Film, Television, and New Media was recently named for Emmy Award-winning television producers Marcy Carsey and Dick Wolf in recognition of their generous support for the construction of a new facility for the innovative center.
  
  
• UCSB has been named one of the 'hottest' colleges in the nation twice in the past five years 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 13 among all public universities.

A Few Fun Facts

• The 7 miles of bikeways on or adjacent to the UCSB campus are used by an estimated 14,000 cyclists daily.
  
  
• Some famous UCSB alumni include Michael Douglas (actor), Giondomenico Picco (Assistant Secretary General; United Nations), Faisal Fahad (Prince of Saudi Arabia), Leroy Chiao (Space Shuttle astronaut), Georgia Jeffries (Emmy nominee for work on China Beach television series), Bob Ballard (Chief Scientist on team that discovered the Titanic), Brian Shaw (Los Angeles Lakers), Joe Redfield (played with Pittsburgh Pirates), Richard Serra (internationally known sculptor), Barbara Rush (actress), Robert Lagomarsino (former member of Congress for California), Scott Frank (Dead Again, Get Shorty, Little Man Tate, Out of Sight), Gregg Araki (filmmaker, The Living End), Benjamin Bratt (actor), Jason Lezak (Gold Medalist, swimming, 2000 Olympics) and Eric Fonoimoana (Gold Medalist, volleyball, 2000 Olympics)
  
  
• Each year, the UCSB dining commons serves 1,092,840 glasses of milk and 40,000 chocolate chip cookies.
  
  
• The newly constructed Donald Bren Hall, home to the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, is the "greenest" building in California and the second greenest building in the nation. Bren Hall was certified at the platinum level by the U.S. Green Building Council.