UC Santa Barbara is ranked No. 5 in the News & World Report listing of the “Top 30 Public National Universities” for 2019, up from No. 8 the past two years. UCSB is ranked No. 30 on the listing of “Best National Universities,” which includes both public and private institutions.

The College of Engineering (CoE) is ranked No. 17 among public universities for “Best Programs at Engineering Schools Whose Highest Degree is a Doctorate” 

In addition, UCSB is ranked No. 4 among public universities and No. 10 overall  on the magazine’s list of “Best Colleges for Veterans,” and is ranked No. 14 for “Best Ethnic Diversity” among public universities.
To achieve its rankings, U.S. News & World Report assigned institutions to categories developed by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. UCSB’s category of national universities includes only institutions that emphasize faculty research and offer a full range of undergraduate majors, plus master’s degrees and doctoral programs.

UC Santa Barbara, which this year experienced the most competitive admissions process in campus history, continues to attract top students. Among prospective freshmen and undergraduate transfer students, academic qualifications and diversity remain exceptionally high. For the 2017-18 academic year, admitted applicants’ average high school grade-point average is 4.28, and the average total score achieved on the required SATR test is 1395 out of a possible 1600. 

The unprecedented academic qualifications and diversity of applicants made fall 2018 admissions the most selective in campus history. The world-class faculty includes six Nobel laureates, two Academy and Emmy Award winners, and recipients of a Millennium Technology Prize, a National Medal of Technology and Innovation and a Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics.

UC Santa Barbara has performed exceptionally well in other national rankings. The most recent College Access Index published by The New York Times ranked it No. 2 for its commitment to economic diversity, and UCSB was ranked No. 19 among public universities on Forbes magazine’s 2018 “America’s Top Colleges” list. 

Within the University of California system, only UC Berkeley and UCLA ranked above UC Santa Barbara on U.S. News & World Report’s 2019 list of top public schools. University of Virginia and University of Michigan joined the three UC campuses in the top five. Seven UC campuses ranked in the top 35. 

The rankings in the Best Colleges 2019 guidebook are based on data U.S. News & World Report collects directly from colleges and universities, as well as from other sources. Additional data was obtained from the American Association of University Professors, the National Collegiate Athletic Association, the Council for Aid to Education and the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics. The magazine evaluates and analyzes data on various indicators of academic quality and assigns a weight to each factor based on its relative importance. It then tabulates composite scores and ranks institutions against others in the same peer group.

See the complete U.S. News & World Report rankings. The “Best Colleges 2019” guidebook goes on sale this week.