I did three years at UCSC then transferred to UCD. Like you, I got into both initially, but I grew up in Davis and wanted to experience something else so I went to SC.

While SC is 420-friendly, it's not a requirement. There were more people in my dorm freshman year that didn't smoke than did.

SC has excellent transportation. There are buses that run from downtown up to Campus on something like 20-minute intervals, plus there is an on-campus shuttle system that circulates kids around campus. You can also bike, or walk across campus in about 20 minutes.

I started in Marine Bio, then switched to Earth Sciences. SC has an excellent program. A couple of my grad student TAs had Geology degrees from UCD. I think the programs are what you make of it. There were people in my program that went to do modeling work for NASA, there were some of us that went into consulting, and others went into teaching.