My last visit while in San Diego was at University of California at San Diego which is in La Jolla. UCSD is an impressive academic institution that is increasingly difficult to gain admission to for in-state as well as out-of-state students. I want to be clear: the campus has a lot of concrete. A lot. There are no palm trees and there's not a lot of grass. There are trees, make no mistake, but the concrete reigns supreme -just in case you were thinking of becoming Malibu Barbie at UCSD. There is one spot on campus where you can see the ocean on a clear day. It's not as big or as intimidating a campus as I expected; you can get from one end to the other in 30 minutes, tops. There are a lot of skateboards, scooters and bikes everywhere and there are also shuttles to take students from one end of campus to the other. There are 33,000 undergraduates at UCSD and one third of them come in as transfer students which is an interesting and wonderful facet of the California higher ed system. What makes UCSD unique in my eyes is its system of residential and academic colleges which the student chooses when applying. Each college has its own set of core requirements, values and priorities in education. While science is extremely popular and very, very strong at UCSD, some of the colleges require a deep dive into the humanities as well. Research is HUGE here, with the university receiving more than a billion dollars per year in funding - a top 10 university in the country in that regard. It's no surprise that even the undergraduates here are serious, high-achieving students who are on their way to solving all kinds of problems. And that's exactly what the world needs