The best California colleges for each major

Students enjoy a sunny day at the Memorial Glade on the Cal campus in Berkeley, Calif., on Friday, May 28, 2010. Enrollment in the summer session at UC Berkeley has set new records this year. Students enjoy a sunny day at the Memorial Glade on the Cal campus in Berkeley, Calif., on Friday, May 28, 2010. Enrollment in the summer session at UC Berkeley has set new records this year. Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 22 Caption Close The best California colleges for each major 1 / 22 Back to Gallery

It's a mixed bag for students in the state of California. Depending on the metric, the state's K-12 public education investment ranks anywhere from middling to abysmal. But if you manage to graduate high school in good standing, the higher education options are plentiful.

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UC Berkeley and UCLA, which rank among the best public universities in the nation, offer (relatively) cheap tuition for in-state students. If you're looking for a small liberal arts college, Pomona and Claremont McKenna are well-regarded options. STEM majors can't do much better than Caltech. And USC offers a large school vibe in a private setting.

As a prospective high schooler, this is generally the type of broad information that will inform a decision. Big school or small school? Public or private? An 18-year-old will likely know little more than this before choosing the place they'll spend the length of their undergraduate career.

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But say you're a particularly precocious (or naive) 18-year-old. You've known for many years that you're going to be a physicist, and you've decided to attend the California school with the best physics major. In this case, Niche, a college ranking website, has the data for you. In the slideshow above, you can scroll through which colleges in California that Niche deems best in some of the most popular majors.

The answers for physics won't surprise you, but perhaps some of the other leaders will.