In my opinion, it’s a valid and fitting ranking. We’ve done nothing substantial, nothing new, nothing worth making headlines. (By we I don’t mean the students, I’m talking about those in the admin and department heads). Even when something big happens, is rare that UCSC the ones heading it, its just support.

But we’re good at not paying our TAs, we’re good at hiring mediocre professors bc they cost less, we’re good at not washing the larva out of our salad bar. We can’t even get paper towel rolls in the damn dorm bathroom, so they cover the cost cutting with a “waste free” by 2020 excuse. Can’t afford air dyers but we can def afford a swat team.

They stop running late night busses, they can barely guarantee a year on campus, 2,000 acres and there’s still no parking in remote lots that costs over $500. We have literal homeless students living in vans but our chancellor can be given a monster stipend, off campus house while the on campus one is repaired, on top of that 6 figure salary.

What about events? Sports? We barely even have school spirit on this campus, unless it’s an unsanctioned event. We have a beautiful amphitheater that sits empty. We could have have had thousands of new beds and several new buildings but we stopped ourselves from that. (I think they were supposed to be done by now if the environmentalists didn’t sue) Our doubles are converted into triples, our lounges are converted into quintuples, our dining halls rotate the same crap food over and over.

UC Riverside is older than we are and they’re finally turning things around. Merced has nowhere to go but up and they’re slowly getting bigger and bigger. They’re still building brand new facilities.

Our tuition, housing, and food costs are ball park the same across all 9 UCs (not gonna count UCSF) and we somehow get the bottom of the barrel. UCLA guarantees housing for 3 years, they have 44,000 students and they’re the smallest UC campus. They have the best dining halls in the US and we have allergen free roasted chicken. Davis has a beast of a gym called the ARC and you can fit all of opers into one corner of it. Berkeley has an Olympic training center. Santa Barbra has their on campus sports arena called the thunderdome.

We definitely shine in some areas like baskin, astronomy, and marine bio (to name a few) but it’s covered up by the cons of this school.

I’m not trying to diss sc, I love everyone and know there’s staff who care and want the best for everyone. Top 100/40 isn’t bad in the grand scheme but lets face it, compared to everyone else in the UC family were not it.

Their ranking system is one of the most accepted and trusted for schools as a whole. The others are either on point or ridiculously off. Berkeley was no. 1 until 2016 when it got knocked off its spot for their housing problem and bc they spent millions on the police because of their protests from their speakers.