University of California–San Francisco

The University of California, San Francisco is a graduate health-sciences campus of the University of California, tracing its origin to Toland Medical College in 1864 and operating as a distinct UC campus from the 1960s. It has no general undergraduate college. Its defining structure is professional schools and a graduate division in medicine, dentistry, nursing, pharmacy, and biomedical science, across Parnassus Heights, Mission Bay, and Mount Zion in San Francisco.

The schools of Medicine, Dentistry, Nursing, and Pharmacy sit beside a Graduate Division that administers basic and translational PhD work. Graduate students work with UCSF Medical Center, Benioff Children’s Hospitals, the Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, Mission Bay laboratories, and affiliates such as the Gladstone Institutes. Strengths include molecular biology, neuroscience, global health, HIV research, and clinical training.

Enrollment is about 3,100 students, all graduate or professional, plus residents and postdoctoral fellows. Faculty number in the thousands when clinical appointments are included. International students are a minority typical of U.S. health campuses, with many countries represented in PhD programs. Scientists associated with the campus include Nobel laureates J. Michael Bishop, Elizabeth Blackburn, and Shinya Yamanaka.

Degrees that structure graduate life are the MD, DDS, PharmD, nursing doctorates, and research PhDs, with some master’s programs in science and health policy. Graduate Division work is laboratory-based; professional schools mix coursework, clerkships, and rotations on a year-round calendar. Support is mainly training grants, fellowships, and graduate researcher posts. Daily life splits between the Parnassus medical hill and the Mission Bay research district.

In the Grad School Navigator directory, University of California–San Francisco lists 16 graduate programs across 6 subjects: 3 master's programs and 13 doctoral programs, with the widest choice in biology, public health and biomedical engineering.