The University of California San Diego (UC San Diego or UCSD) is a public land-grant research university located in the La Jolla neighborhood of San Diego, California. Established in 1960, it is the southernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California. UC San Diego offers over 200 undergraduate and graduate degree programs and has a large student body, with 35,442 undergraduates and 10,736 graduate students. It is tied with UCLA for the largest student housing capacity in the nation. The campus occupies 2,178 acres (881 ha) near the Pacific coast.
UC San Diego is consistently ranked among the top universities worldwide. For example, the Academic Ranking of World Universities ranked UC San Diego 18th in the world. The University is recognized for its research output; The Nature Index listed UC San Diego as 8th in the United States for research output by article count from 2024-2025. In 2021, the National Science Foundation ranked UC San Diego 7th among American universities for research and development expenditures, with $1.42 billion. UC San Diego's faculty and alumni include sixteen Nobel laureates, as well as recipients of the National Medal of Science, Fields Medals, Pulitzer Prizes, and MacArthur Fellowships.
