CJim

UCSD's reputation is more than worth it in comparison to USC in both the university level and program level PS: I like your point value system - people should start to do this more often

Yea definitely, that list was not meant to be exclusive. A&M is great too.

Don't worry about rankings, there is a reason they are so inconsistent. Companies in CA know UCSB and recruit from there. This is not a university to worry about.

The strongest integrated circuits schools are: UCSD, UCLA, UCB, UT-Austin, UW, Columbia, and Georgia-Tech Taken from the integrated circuits group page at UCSD. The professor I do undergraduate research with at Berkeley said the same. Between UT and CMU, go to UT.

This statement is a joke if he is honestly comparing UCSD and Columbia. Columbia is good, but it's emphasis isn't in engineering as much. UCSD is the superior option along with Michigan. UCSD is one of the top engineering research schools in the country. UCSD is equal to Michigan. The difference is that Michigan is a 200 year old school, while UCSD is only 50 years old. UCSD's ECE program itself is only 27 years old and still competes with other schools as a top engineering school. The difference in ranking is due to the fact that it makes people uneasy to put a 27 year old program above a 200 year old one. Give it 10+ more years and UCSD will easily be a top 10 or better. Rankings are a flawed popularity contest. It is impressive that all six engineering branches at UCSD are top 20 without even being 30 years old. UCSD and Michigan both put a lot of funding into their engineering research http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobs_School_of_Engineering The impact of UCSD is growing very rapidly. You should go with either UCSD or Michigan.