It was a simple gesture. But it carried a powerful message for those 14,000 undergrads at Irvine.
“It gives them role models, so they don’t suffer from imposter syndrome,” says Chancellor Howard Gillman, himself once a first-generation college student. “They know they belong here.”
That grassroots faculty effort grew into a comprehensive outreach and support program and became a model for all 10 campuses in the University of California system. Today, faculty wear T-shirts and buttons in the first weeks of fall to “out” themselves.
It’s that long-established culture of support that helps UC-Irvine place at the top of MONEY’s 2019 Best Colleges rankings. Pursuing a college degree is one of the most expensive decisions you can make—and with ever-rising prices, families from every background worry they’ll get it wrong. That’s where MONEY’s rankings can help. For our annual analysis, we considered more than 19,000 data points including graduation rates, tuition fees, family borrowing, and alumni salaries to identify the colleges that best combine quality and affordability.
The result is a mix of 744 colleges that highlights campuses like No. 13 California State University-Long Beach, where incoming students report average SAT scores of about 1100 out of 1600, alongside more selective schools like No. 14 Harvard University, where nearly a quarter of students submitted perfect SAT scores. Recent graduates of both colleges report higher-than-expected salaries, according to MONEY’s calculations.
