University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego)
La Jolla, California · Founded 1960
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Test-free — scores not considered
UC San Diego does not look at SAT or ACT scores at all. Its own Common Data Set answers NO to the question of whether it uses those scores in admission decisions, marks them NOT CONSIDERED FOR ADMISSION EVEN IF SUBMITTED, and rates standardized test scores as NOT CONSIDERED in its factor table. Every score table in the document is empty because it does not collect them. Sending a score cannot help you and cannot hurt you, and the same holds for transfer applicants. This is University of California policy rather than a temporary window. The one place scores still appear is after you enroll: the university uses them for course placement advising. Applicants whose first language is not English still need TOEFL, IELTS or an equivalent. Source: UC San Diego Common Data Set 2025-2026, sections C7 and C8 (verified September 2026).
About
Every undergraduate here belongs to one of eight colleges, each with its own general-education requirements, its own advising staff and its own character. The founders borrowed the idea from Oxford and Cambridge Universities: a family of small colleges inside a large research university. Your college does not decide your major - you can take any major from any college - but it shapes the requirements you finish and the people you live among. The academic center of gravity is science: more than a third of all bachelor's degrees here are in the sciences.
History
UC San Diego was founded in 1960 and enrolled its first undergraduates in 1964, which makes it young for a university of its size. It grew up around the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, which had been on the coast since 1903. Sixteen Nobel laureates have taught on this campus.
What stands out
- Eight undergraduate colleges - Revelle, John Muir, Thurgood Marshall, Earl Warren, Eleanor Roosevelt, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth
- No standardized tests in admissions - the University of California does not consider them at all
- Sciences and social sciences are the two biggest fields by degrees awarded
- Transfer is a wide door: UC San Diego admitted 12,440 transfer students for fall 2025
- The Scripps Institution of Oceanography sits on the same campus
Popular majors
Campus life
Most first-year students live in university housing (86 percent) and about 54 percent of undergraduates do overall, which is high for a public university this size - the college system keeps students on campus. Greek life is small: 8 percent of undergraduate men join a fraternity and 7 percent of undergraduate women join a sorority.