The University of California, Irvine, is a public research university in Irvine, California.
It is one of the 10 campuses in the University of California (UC) system. UC Irvine offers 87 undergraduate degrees and 129 graduate and professional degrees. The university is classified as a Research I university and in 2017 had $361 million in research and development expenditures, according to the National Science Foundation.
UC Irvine became a member of the Association of American Universities in 1996 and is the youngest university to hold membership. It is considered to be one of the "Public Ivies," meaning that it is among those publicly funded universities thought to provide a quality of education comparable to that of the Ivy League.

The university also administers the UC Irvine Medical Center, a large teaching hospital in Orange, and its affiliated health sciences system; the University of California, Irvine, Arboretum; and a portion of the University of California Natural Reserve System. UC Irvine set up the first Earth System Science Department in the United States.
UCI was one of three new UC campuses established in the 1960s to accommodate growing enrollments across the UC system. A site in Orange County was identified in 1959, and in the following year the Irvine Company sold the University of California 1,000 acres (400 ha) of land for one dollar to establish the new campus.

President Lyndon B. Johnson dedicated the campus in 1964, a fact which was commemorated with the delivery of a commencement speech by President Barack Obama exactly fifty years later. A total of seven Nobel Prize laureates have been affiliated with UCI. The university is also associated with a total of seven Pulitzer Prize winners, including three faculty members and four alumni.

California Polytechnic State University is a public university in San Luis Obispo, California.
It is one of two polytechnics in the California State University system. The university is organized into six colleges offering 65 bachelor's and 39 master's degrees.
Cal Poly San Luis Obispo primarily focuses on undergraduate education and as of fall 2018 Cal Poly has 21,037 undergraduate and 775 graduate students. The academic focus is fostering a comprehensive undergraduate education, combining technical and professional curricula with the arts and humanities. The university is located in San Luis Obispo, California, often noted as one of the happiest cities in the United States, with many alumni in Silicon Valley.

Cal Poly San Luis Obispo was established as the California Polytechnic School in 1901 when Governor Henry T. Gage signed the California Polytechnic School Bill after a campaign by journalist Myron Angel. The polytechnic school held its first classes on October 1, 1903 to 20 students, offering secondary level courses of study, which took three years to complete. The school continued to grow steadily, except during a period from the mid 1910s to the early 1920s when World War I led to drops in enrollment and drastic budget cuts forced fewer class offerings. In 1924, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo was placed under the control of the California State Board of Education.

In 1933, the Board of Education changed Cal Poly San Luis Obispo into a two-year technical and vocational school. The institution began to offer Bachelor of Arts degrees in 1940, with the first baccalaureate exercises held in 1942. The school was renamed the California State Polytechnic College in 1947 to better reflect its higher education offerings, and in 1949, a Master of Arts degree in education was added. In 1960, control of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and all other state colleges was transferred from the State Board of Education to an independent Board of Trustees, which later became the California State University system.

California State University, Long Beach (also known as Long Beach State, or The Beach) is a public university in Long Beach, California. The 322-acre campus is the third largest of the 23-school California State University system and one of the largest universities in the state of California by enrollment, its student body numbering 37,776 for the Fall 2016 semester.

The university continues to receive record numbers of applicants; for Fall 2018, it received 102,879 undergraduate applications—the most of any CSU campus. The school has a 28% acceptance rate. In 2017, 17,650 out of 63,048 applicants were admitted making Cal State Long Beach a highly competitive school to get into. As of Fall 2014, the school had 2,283 total faculty, with 36.7 percent of those faculty on the tenure track. With 5,286 graduate students, the university enrolls one of the largest graduate student populations across the CSU system and in the state of California.

The university is located in the Los Altos neighborhood of Long Beach at the southeastern coastal tip of Los Angeles County, less than one mile from the border with Orange County. The university offers 82 different Bachelor's degrees, 65 types of Master's degrees, and four Doctoral degrees. Long Beach State is one of the West Coast's top universities in terms of student body racial diversity, being named the 5th most diverse university in the West by U.S. News & World Report.
It is also home to the largest publicly funded art school west of the Mississippi. The university currently operates with one of the lowest student fees in the country at $6,738 per year for full-time students having California residence.

California State University, Fullerton (CSUF or Cal State Fullerton) is a public university in Fullerton, California. With a total enrollment of about 40,400, it has the largest student body of the 23-campus California State University system, and its approximately 5,800 graduate student body is also the largest in the CSU and one of the largest in all of California.

As of Fall 2016, the school had 2,083 faculty, of which 782 were on the tenure track. The university offers 109 degrees: 57 bachelor's degrees and 52 graduate degrees, including three doctorates. CSUF is designated as a Hispanic-serving institution and eligible to be designated as an Asian American Native American Pacific Islander serving institution (AANAPISI).

The university is nationally accredited in art, athletic training, business, chemistry, communications, communicative disorders, computer science, dance, engineering, music, nursing, public administration, public health, social work, teacher education and theater. Spending related to CSUF generates an impact of around $2.26 billion to the California and local economy, and sustains nearly 16,000 jobs statewide.