The University of California, San Diego (UCSD, also commonly referred to as UC San Diego) is a public research university in San Diego, California. The school's nearly campus contains 694 buildings and is located in the La Jolla community. UC San Diego is one of ten University of California campuses and was founded in 1960 around the pre-existing Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

22,048 undergraduate and 5,073 graduate students enrolled in Fall 2007 and the university awarded 6,802 degrees in 2005/06. The university is organized into six undergraduate colleges and six graduate divisions and offers 125 undergraduate majors, 52 masters degrees, 51 doctoral programs, and four professional degrees. The four year, full-time undergraduate program is classified as "more selective, higher transfer-in" by the Carnegie Foundation and was ranked 35th among national universities and 7th among public schools by U.S. News & World Report. The university was ranked 14th internationally in the Academic Ranking of World Universities.

The university employs 7,566 faculty members including eight Nobel Laureates, eight MacArthur fellows, three National Medal of Science laureates, and one Fields medallist. UCSD has a very high level of research activity and total research funding for 2006/07 was $714 million. The university operates the UC San Diego Medical Center and is affiliated with several regional research centers, such as the Salk Institute, the Burnham Institute for Medical Research, and The Scripps Research Institute. The university was admitted to the Association of American Universities in 1982.

UC San Diego's 19 intercollegiate sports teams are known as the Tritons and participate in the NCAA's Division II (DII) level in the California Collegiate Athletic Association.

History

In 1957, an undergraduate curriculum was planned as part of the general science curriculum, and Roger Revelle, Director of Scripps, was named dean of the new school. UC San Diego was the first general campus of the UC to be designed "from the top down" in terms of curricular and research emphasis. Stellar faculty were recruited as they became available as opposed to the dictates of a pre-planned curriculum or academic schedule. The graduate division of the school opened in 1960, when it had 20 faculty in residence, with instruction offered in the fields of physics, biology, chemistry and earth science. Classes initially met in the Scripps Institute.

Before the selection of San Diego was made final, however, the Regents requested an additional gift of of undeveloped mesa land northeast of Scripps, as well as 500 acres (2 km²) in Camp Matthews, a United States Marine Corps rifle range adjacent to the site. The city voted in agreement to its part in 1958, and the UC, convinced that all its other conditions would be met, approved construction of the new campus in 1960. Herbert York was designated its first chancellor, and he worked out the planning of the main campus according to the "Oxbridge" model, relying on many of Revelle's ideas.