By: Wilder Shaw
Credit: Flickr/Daniel Parks (edited)
There are a lot of things kids who go to California colleges like to hang their hats on when they graduate, like going to the top-rated public school in the country ('sup Berkeley), or attending a university with infinity football titles (hi, USC), or a zillion other things that honestly don't matter even a little bit. What does? Whether you went to the COOLEST school, of course.
Which ones are those, exactly? Well, we did a whole bunch of fancy science to create a point-based system that would help us definitively and once and for all figure it out. Factors that went in:
1) Are they ranked low academically? ('Cause everybody was too busy doing cool other stuff to care about their grades. Duh.)
2) How high is the dropout rate? ('Cause people had too much fun and had to drop out, obviously.)
3) Were they ever ranked as a Playboy Party School?
4) How many bars/pubs do they have physically on campus?
5) Are they in a cool city?
So here they are, 36 colleges in California, scientifically ranked by how cool they are.
(Editor's Note: Any college with fewer than 10,000 students was not considered. Sorry, Epic Bible College.)
Credit: Flickr/Prayitno (edited)
Not a ton of shockers at the bottom of the list, oh right, except for LAST PLACE UCLA, which has as many on-campus bars as UCR and as many Playboy Party School nods as UC Davis. Stanford, meanwhile, avoids super-loser cellar status (thanks UCLA!) despite a super-uncool 95% graduation rate. Also: UCSD, we expected more from you.
Credit: Flickr/John Morgan (edited)
Sure, everybody in SLO has the body of a T-1000, but looks can't make up a sad on-campus bar/Playboy Party School showing. Cal is probably the biggest surprise here checking in at No. 28 despite the second highest academic ranking in the state (you go Glen Coco). Crazier still, it'd be EVEN HIGHER had its second on-campus bar (Bear's Lair) been open by the time we put this together (it was supposed to re-open last week). The one it does have, however, earned the Golden Bears some bonus points since it's a secret one (hint: it's in the faculty lounge).
Credit: Flickr/EsotericSapience (edited)
If this thing included "being surrounded by great food" as a factor, CSUN totally would've been higher (King's Burgers FTW!), but those aren't the rules, so, sorry guys. Also, who knew UC Merced was even a thing?
Credit: San Francisco State University (edited)
Humboldt is the first to check in at the top-20 (go Lumberjacks!) and also the first to tip the 60% dropout rate scale. As for Cal State Stanislaus and Cal State San Marcos: more than half of your students don't graduate, so, pretty much, keep on doing what you're doing.
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