Hey all,

Fairly long time lurker on A2C here, but I'm resurfacing again because I need help with choosing between UCSD (got taken off the waitlist recently) and Cal Poly SLO for Physics.

I've done most of the research myself, but have a few worries about each that I wanted to ask your opinions on. For a bit more context, I'm planning on going straight for a PhD. in Physics after undergrad and I received enough financial aid from both schools that money isn't a deciding factor.

The Bolded Words act as tl;dr's.

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• UC San Diego Worries:

Tough research competition: I really, and mean really like physics, so stuff like research is super fascinating and important to me. But with the size of UCSD, I was wondering if it was hard/competitive to find research positions or research groups earlier on (preferably freshman-sophomore year ish), and if so, is it something I can work around (because I do really like having a group that I can just do cool research with)

Socially Iffy: I've heard it's rather tough to socialize with others, and as someone who spent their entire high school being an introvert shut-in, I kinda want to change that in college and was a bit worried about UCSD's status (Also, socializing in a large crowd sounds like a nightmare to me). I also haven't been able to locate stuff like Physics lounges (Cal poly had one called h-bar), or seen much from the UCSD physics club, things that I was kind of banking on for socializing lol.

Large classes: Due to my high school's small size, it was super easy to interact with my physics teacher and got him to become sort of a mentor figure. With UCSD's large size, I was wondering whether that would be possible early on (like freshman year), because if not, that's a bit of a deal breaker for me.

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• Cal Poly SLO Worries:

Less impressive/well-known Physics Department: While I'm not really one to care much for prestige, the department of physics at UCSD is much more well-known within the physics community than Cal Poly SLO's, so I'm a bit worried that I'll be missing a big opportunity by picking the less established department. For example, the Physics Course Catalog at UCSD (from what I've seen) has a whole lot more upper division classes than CP SLO.

Lower Graduate School Chances: Ties in with the first point. Since I'm planning on jumping to a PhD. after undergrad, I'm a bit worried that Cal Poly Slo won't have as much support for students who want to go to a grad school. I'm not sure, but from what I've seen, it also seems that those from UCSD have an easier time getting into better graduate programs than those who came from Cal Poly SLO, so I also have some questions about that.

Discrimination Problems: This is also fairly iffy for me. From what I've seen and heard, CP SLO seems to have a pretty bad discrimination/hate/racism problem among its students. The tour guide we had for CP SLO was actually the one that told us about its discrimination problems, and after a bit of searching online, it wasn't hard to find stories corroborating that story. As a minority myself (Asian American), that sounds like a pretty big deal breaker, so I would like some opinions on that (if you have any).

Thank you so much for reading this long post lol, and thanks in advance for any advice/help.