UCLA vs. UC Berkeley: Which California institution is the best in the country?
UCLA and UC Berkeley have staked their claims on social media after U.S. News and World Report's global rankings placed Berkeley as the top U.S. public university.
Technically, it ranked No. 6, behind five private campuses, including Harvard, MIT and Stanford. But being the top public university on the global list was enough for Berkeley.
It wasn't long before an influx of celebratory boasts spread on social media saluting the oldest UC campus.
UCLA said not so fast.
'Still #1' went up on UCLA's TikTok account, citing another U.S. News national ranking of public universities that came out nine months ago, putting the Bruins in the top spot among public campuses in the nation.
Fans and alumni of both schools have been sparring ever since, including proud Berkeley alum and Essential California writer Jim Rainey, who was too biased to write about this himself.
It depends on which list you're referring to.
As my colleague Jaweed Kaleem wrote, the U.S. News and World Report rankings differ in methodology and scope. The global list — which looks at 2,250 institutions both private and public — focused on academic research, including citations and regional reputation.
On that list, UCLA ranked as the third-best public university in the country, behind the University of Washington in Seattle.
Yet on the national list of public colleges and universities, UCLA takes first place, with Berkeley trailing behind it at No. 2.
The national list homed in on the undergraduate experience at 1,500 campuses, weighing graduation rates, first-year retention, how well students from lower-income families perform, and the results of 'peer assessment surveys' sent to college presidents, provosts and deans of admissions.
Although the rankings are popular as many campuses around the country covet the lists, they are controversial.
Over the years, several prominent professional schools have pulled out of providing data to the U.S. News law school rankings.
In 2022, UCLA's and UC Irvine's law school deans said they'd boycott the rankings because of the group's methodology, which they said disincentivized schools from supporting public service careers for their grads.
In the competing world of list-makers, Berkeley beats Westwood overall.
Sorry, UCLA. I promise Jim had nothing to do with this.
Both campuses are great places to study. The schools share a lot more in common than not.
After all, a bruin is a bear.
Sergio Carabarin writes: 'Pfeiffer Beach in Big Sur.'
Wayne Bernhardson writes: 'Sculptured Beach, Point Reyes National Seashore.'
Email us at essentialcalifornia@latimes.com, and your response might appear in the newsletter this week.
Today's great photo is from Times photographer Myung J. Chun at AGWC Rockin' Rescue animal adoption center in Woodland Hills, which has taken in pets left behind after ICE raids.
Jim Rainey, staff writerDiamy Wang, homepage internIzzy Nunes, audience internKevinisha Walker, multiplatform editorAndrew Campa, Sunday writerKarim Doumar, head of newsletters
How can we make this newsletter more useful? Send comments to essentialcalifornia@latimes.com. Check our top stories, topics and the latest articles on latimes.com.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Business Insider
23-07-2025
- Business Insider
Growing up, I called myself Chinese. A high school project helped me understand the difference.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Ginny Wu, 32, a Taiwanese-American UCLA graduate living in Taiwan. Her words have been edited for length and clarity. For my dad's generation, the American dream was about building a better future for their kids. My uncle was the first in his family to get a green card. He eventually sponsored his siblings, including my dad, to leave Taiwan and move to the US. I was born and raised in the States, and never expected that, decades later, I'd end up moving in the opposite direction — back to Taiwan, where their journey had begun. I grew up in a small town Both of my parents are from Taitung, a rural county in southeastern Taiwan. My paternal grandpa was the county magistrate there, and my grandma ran a rice mill business. My dad moved to America in the late 1970s. A job opportunity brought him to Santa Clara, before he moved to Anaheim and then Texas, where he co-ran a motel and even managed an emu ranch. He traveled back to Taiwan to get married, and in 1988, my mom joined him in the US. I was born and raised in Norco, a small, rural town in Southern California. My dad loved the countryside and bought a house there. The town wasn't very diverse, and I was often one of just a few Asian kids in my class. I feel fortunate that I never really experienced racism growing up. At home, we spoke Mandarin. I hated studying the language as a kid, but now I'm grateful — I use Mandarin every day. An assignment changed the way I view identity Growing up, I didn't think much about what being Asian actually meant. I'd say I was Chinese — partly because we spoke it at home, partly because that's what teachers checked on school forms. That changed in high school, when I started the International Baccalaureate program. I wrote my extended essay on how Japanese colonization shaped Taiwanese identity. None of my previous history classes had covered that Taiwan was occupied by Japan for 50 years — my parents never went through it in depth either But the topic hit home. It helped explain why my dad said Japanese phrases before meals, and why my parents used Japanese loanwords without realizing. Exploring the Japanese influences helped me make sense of it all. Exploring that influence deepened my understanding of Taiwan's story, and my own. That essay planted a seed. A few months after graduating from UCLA with a degree in economics, I was hired by Northrop Grumman, an aerospace and defense company. Over the next four years, I worked as a financial analyst in a professional development program rotation. In my last rotation, I pivoted to a different track, taking on a role as a business process analyst in aerospace systems. Despite having a stable job, I started to feel boxed in. I'd never lived anywhere else, and I wanted to see what life outside Southern California could be like. The first move That desire led me to join Anchor Taiwan, a one-month startup immersion program, in 2018. I took time off work to attend, and it changed everything. Experiencing Taiwan as an adult, without my parents and surrounded by peers, helped me imagine building a life here. By the end of the year, I'd quit my job, packed up, and moved to Taipei. I didn't have a job lined up at first. I enrolled in Mandarin classes while job hunting and eventually landed a role at Taiwan Startup Stadium. That was my entry point into the local tech world. When I told my parents I was moving, my mom wasn't thrilled. Having grown up during financially unstable times in Taiwan, she valued career stability and didn't love the idea of me quitting. But she also knew I hadn't felt fulfilled. While they weren't exactly enthusiastic, they were supportive. I was lucky to have extended family in Taiwan — I stayed at my aunt's place while getting settled. I also applied for full Taiwanese citizenship so I could vote and now have my Taiwan ID. Taipei reshaped me I used to be a homebody, like my parents, but the city has drawn out a more social, spontaneous side. My closest friends are mostly locals who speak incredible English, and I feel more connected to my extended family than ever. Work-wise, the transition's actually been smoother than I thought. I'm not at a traditional local company, though — I've heard those can be pretty hierarchical and intense. Taipei has pushed me out of my bubble in the best way. It's clean, convenient, and safe. I walk or bike alone at night without a second thought. I take the bus to work, meet friends for dinner or to go rock climbing, and sometimes jog around the track near my office. Of course, there are things I miss about the US. My parents — now in their 70s and 80s — are still there, and they've never visited me in Taiwan. But I used to get anxious about the smallest things, like mailing a package or ordering a meal. Now, I navigate life in a new language, in a system I didn't grow up in. I've built something from scratch, and that feels like home. I dream of launching a business here one day.
Los Angeles Times
14-07-2025
- Los Angeles Times
UCLA vs. UC Berkeley: Which California institution is the best in the country?
Who's really the No. 1 public university in the country? UCLA and UC Berkeley have staked their claims on social media after U.S. News and World Report's global rankings placed Berkeley as the top U.S. public university. Technically, it ranked No. 6, behind five private campuses, including Harvard, MIT and Stanford. But being the top public university on the global list was enough for Berkeley. It wasn't long before an influx of celebratory boasts spread on social media saluting the oldest UC campus. UCLA said not so fast. 'Still #1' went up on UCLA's TikTok account, citing another U.S. News national ranking of public universities that came out nine months ago, putting the Bruins in the top spot among public campuses in the nation. Fans and alumni of both schools have been sparring ever since, including proud Berkeley alum and Essential California writer Jim Rainey, who was too biased to write about this himself. It depends on which list you're referring to. As my colleague Jaweed Kaleem wrote, the U.S. News and World Report rankings differ in methodology and scope. The global list — which looks at 2,250 institutions both private and public — focused on academic research, including citations and regional reputation. On that list, UCLA ranked as the third-best public university in the country, behind the University of Washington in Seattle. Yet on the national list of public colleges and universities, UCLA takes first place, with Berkeley trailing behind it at No. 2. The national list homed in on the undergraduate experience at 1,500 campuses, weighing graduation rates, first-year retention, how well students from lower-income families perform, and the results of 'peer assessment surveys' sent to college presidents, provosts and deans of admissions. Although the rankings are popular as many campuses around the country covet the lists, they are controversial. Over the years, several prominent professional schools have pulled out of providing data to the U.S. News law school rankings. In 2022, UCLA's and UC Irvine's law school deans said they'd boycott the rankings because of the group's methodology, which they said disincentivized schools from supporting public service careers for their grads. In the competing world of list-makers, Berkeley beats Westwood overall. Sorry, UCLA. I promise Jim had nothing to do with this. Both campuses are great places to study. The schools share a lot more in common than not. After all, a bruin is a bear. Sergio Carabarin writes: 'Pfeiffer Beach in Big Sur.' Wayne Bernhardson writes: 'Sculptured Beach, Point Reyes National Seashore.' Email us at essentialcalifornia@ and your response might appear in the newsletter this week. Today's great photo is from Times photographer Myung J. Chun at AGWC Rockin' Rescue animal adoption center in Woodland Hills, which has taken in pets left behind after ICE raids. Jim Rainey, staff writerDiamy Wang, homepage internIzzy Nunes, audience internKevinisha Walker, multiplatform editorAndrew Campa, Sunday writerKarim Doumar, head of newsletters How can we make this newsletter more useful? Send comments to essentialcalifornia@ Check our top stories, topics and the latest articles on
CNN
11-07-2025
- CNN
Camp Mystic's owner warned of floods for decades. Then the river killed him
Dick Eastland warned for decades about the hidden dangers of the beautiful but volatile Guadalupe River, a peril he saw firsthand while running his family's youth camp alongside its banks. Eastland saw floods damage Camp Mystic again and again – and his pregnant wife was even airlifted to a hospital while the camp in central Texas was cut off by floodwaters. He successfully pushed for a new flood warning system after 10 children at a nearby camp were swept to their deaths in 1987, and in recent years served on the board of the local river authority as it supported renewed efforts to improve warnings on the Guadalupe. 'The river is beautiful,' Eastland told the Austin American-Statesman in 1990. 'But you have to respect it.' But after 27 people were killed at Camp Mystic in last week's cataclysmic flooding – along with Eastland himself, who died while trying to rescue his young campers – the scale of the tragedy highlights potential missed opportunities by Camp Mystic's owners and government officials to better mitigate those risks. About a decade after it was installed, the warning system Eastland had championed in the late '80s became antiquated and broken. The river authority ultimately shut it down in 1999, saying it was 'unreliable with some of the system's stations not reporting information,' according to an article in the Kerrville Daily Times. Yet periodic attempts to adopt a more modern flood-monitoring system, including one with warning sirens that might have alerted campers last week, repeatedly failed to gain traction – stalled by low budgets, some local opposition and a lack of state support. At Camp Mystic, meanwhile, several of the cabins that were hit hardest in the flooding were in an area identified by the federal government as the highest-risk location for inundations from the Guadalupe. Even as the camp built new cabins in a less-risky flood zone elsewhere on its property, nothing was done to relocate the buildings in the most danger. 'Camp officials might have not been aware of flood risk when they first built the cabins,' before the county even had flood maps, said Anna Serra-Llobet, a University of California-Berkeley researcher who studies flood risk. But after the recent construction, she said, officials should have realized they were in an area of 'severe hazard.' Eastland has been praised as a hero for his efforts to save campers on Friday and remembered as a beloved figure by generations who spent their summers in the idyllic riverside refuge. His legacy is less clear as a public steward of the sometimes deadly river that ultimately took his life. 'If he wasn't going to die of natural causes, this was the only other way—saving the girls that he so loved and cared for,' his grandson George Eastland wrote in an Instagram tribute. 'Although he no longer walks this earth, his impact will never fade in the lives he touched.' Camp Mystic did not respond to a request for comment. Camp Mystic has a long history with flooding, going back to just a few years after it was established 99 years ago. In 1932, flood waters 'swept away' several cabins at the camp and led campers to evacuate across the river by canoe, according to an article in the Abilene Daily Reporter. A counselor told the Austin American-Statesman at the time that campers might 'have drowned if we had gone out the front door and walked face-into a sheet of water!' In 1978, an article in the Kerrville Mountain Sun reported that Camp Mystic was 'the most severely damaged' of local summer camps affected by a flood that year. A separate article reported that five Camp Mystic counselors 'had their automobiles swept into the Guadalupe River' by flood waters that year. And in 1985, Eastland's wife Tweety, then pregnant with their fourth child, had to be airlifted from Camp Mystic to a hospital due to floodwaters, local news reported. One of the region's most devastating floods – until last week's Fourth of July disaster – came in 1987, when 10 children attending a different camp in the area were killed by floodwaters during a rushed evacuation. Eastland, who at the time was serving on the board of the Upper Guadalupe River Authority, which manages the river, pushed for a new flood warning system. In newspaper articles, he described a computer-powered system that would lead to automatic alerts if water levels on the Guadalupe rose beyond a set limit. The proposal was delayed, but officials eventually created a system of 21 gauges up and down the Guadalupe and its tributaries. Even as Eastland voiced pride in the new system, he was quick to remind the public of the Guadalupe's deadly power. 'I'm sure there will be other drownings,' Eastland said in a 1990 interview with the Austin American-Statesman. 'People don't heed the warnings.' In the following years, the early flood warning system that Eastland advocated for – and was once considered state-of-the-art – started to suffer problems. In April 1998, the company that maintained the system 'closed its doors without notice,' and the gauge system soon stopped functioning because of lack of maintenance, the Kerrville Daily Times reported. In February 1999, the river authority shut the system down because it had become 'unreliable with some of the system's stations not reporting information,' and board members worried about 'liability concerns that the system would send 'false signals,'' according to an article in the Times. A handful of river gauges remain in service on the Guadalupe today, but the county lacks a full-scale warning system to broadcast public alerts when floodwaters rise. Kerr County officials, along with the river authority that Eastland periodically served on, worked to change that over the last decade, searching for funding for a flood warning system that included more river gauges and a network of sirens. But they found themselves struggling to overcome funding deficits and opposition from some skeptical residents. Grant applications for the system were denied by the state in 2016 and 2017, and the authority later decided not to pursue a separate grant after realizing that it would only cover five percent of the system's cost. Around the same time, Camp Mystic was embarking on an expansion project. As the number of girls attending the camp grew over the years – leading to waitlists to get in each summer – the camp built more than a dozen new cabins farther south of the Guadalupe River alongside the smaller Cypress Creek. Some of those cabins were located in an area that the federal government has determined has a 1% chance of flooding each year, which would have required officials to get special approval from the county government to build there. But the risk was even higher at some of Camp Mystic's cabins closest to the Guadalupe, several of which are located inside the river's 'regulatory floodways' – the areas that flood first and are most dangerous – according to federal flood maps. Those cabins have been around for decades, historical aerial photos show, apparently before the Federal Emergency Management Agency's first floodzone maps were developed. Dealing with preexisting structures like these inside risky floodzones is especially challenging, said Serra-Llobet, the UC Berkeley flood expert. 'When they did the construction of the recent buildings, they should have seen the FEMA maps,' Serra-Llobet said. That, she said, was a 'window of opportunity' where camp officials could have realized their decades-old dorms were in a high-hazard zone and acted to address it. Camp Mystic could have relocated the buildings to higher ground, or just turned them into structures for recreational activities and made sure that campers were sleeping in safer areas, she said. Still, Serra-Llobet argued that Kerr County should move past the 'blame game' that comes after any disaster and focus on the lessons that could be learned for protecting people from floods going forward. It's not clear whether Eastland personally grappled with the high-risk flood zone running through his own campground. But in recent years, he was part of continued efforts for an improved flood warning system for the region. Eastland returned to the river authority's board in 2022 after being appointed by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. After the previous setbacks, the board this year moved forward with a proposal to create a new 'centralized dashboard' of rainfall, river depth and other data sources 'to support local flood monitoring and emergency response,' according to the county government. In April, the river authority voted to hire a firm to develop the data system and had planned to begin work this month. That was postponed after last week's disastrous flooding. After Eastland was found dead, tributes have rolled in from his colleagues, community members and former campers whose lives he touched over the decades at Camp Mystic. 'Although I am devastated, I can't say I'm surprised that you sacrificed your life with the hopes of someone else's being saved,' Eastland's grandson wrote in his Instagram post. April Ancira spent summers from the age of 8 to 14 at Camp Mystic. In an interview, she remembered Eastland helping her catch a big fish – and being just as thrilled as she was when she successfully reeled it in. 'My memories of him wrapping his arms around so many campers and being so excited to see them excel is incredible,' she said. Austin Dickson, who served on the river authority board along with Eastland and sat next to him at board meetings, remembered him as a 'pillar in our county and our community' who had championed a recent effort to create a new park along the river. 'So many people say, 'Mystic is my heaven,' or 'Mystic is a dreamland,' and I think that's true,' he said. 'That's Dick and Tweety's life's work to make that true.' CNN's Allison Gordon and Lauren Mascarenhas contributed reporting.
