This week, as students across the country make their final decision about where to attend college, 许多人都想知道未来几年将会发生什么.
At the world’s leading public university, undergraduates direct research, start volunteer organizations, teach classes, launch companies, 为自己的发明申请专利，与奥运选手和诺贝尔奖得主一起学习.
Here are just a few of the possibilities:
Credit: Simone Duca
1. 发现一个新的物种——或者一个新的星球.
UC’s role as a research university means that undergraduates don’t just study what others have discovered. They have a hand in making those breakthroughs.
Undergraduates in disciplines from the hard sciences to the humanities produce original research, tapping into state-of-the-art equipment to probe the future and rare archives and collections to explore the past.
As a result, students publish papers, present at international conferences and even put their names to some remarkable discoveries.
Students at UC Santa Cruz, for example, 创建了系外行星探测项目，绘制了数十颗新行星的地图. #Oscarssowhite是推特上的热门话题, a group of UCLA undergrads dug into film and library archives to build a digital database of African American silent film. 正规欧洲杯买球网站河滨分校的学生约书亚·奥利瓦发现了一种新的萤火虫. He plans to name it after his mom.
Credit: University of California
2. Go to class in a world that you created.
UC San Diego has opened the country’s first virtual reality classroom, where students make their own reality.
Beyond building their own worlds, the classroom lets students dive, Magic School Bus-style, 进入他们正在学习的科目:在细胞水平上探索身体, for example, 或者在古代世界的集市上漫步.
正规欧洲杯买球网站伯克利分校正在建立一个类似的实验室. 其他大学也在将虚拟现实推向新的维度.
正规欧洲杯买球网站圣克鲁斯分校的学生游戏开发人员合作 CAVE lab, a fully immersive experience — think IMAX for 3-D — that allows groups to explore virtual environments together.
UC Merced recently opened the WAVE, a massive, half-pipe-shaped VR system that uses 20 screens with surround sound and high definition 3-D video to take users to places otherwise impossible to access, 比如吉萨金字塔下的密室, 遥远的太阳系和人脑中的神经回路.
Credit: Simone Duca
3. Invent the next big thing
A lightweight, collapsible bike helmet 这符合使用者头部的形状，完全由蘑菇制成. A biodegradable algae surfboard. A 21st century upgrade to the trusty stethoscope that streams your heart rhythms to an app on your phone. These are just a few inventions that UC undergrads helped move from the lab to the marketplace.
正规欧洲杯买球网站每天推出五项新发明，其中许多都是学生们的创意.
In maker labs and clubs, students tinker with high-tech tools and fabrication equipment to build prototypes of projects that range from the wacky to the sublime. Campus incubators and accelerators provide work spaces, support and business resources to help students develop early-stage technology and learn how to commercialize their ideas.
结果是:有进取心的学生可以把自己的名字写在美国大学的大学文凭上.S. patent before they’ve even finished college. Learn more at the innovation and entrepreneurship page.
4. 教一门3d生物打印的课，或者《正规欧洲杯买球网站》中的政治
Students anywhere can take a class, but at UC Berkeley and UCLA, they can design and teach one. The result is a range of offerings that explore weighty topics through subjects near and dear to students’ hearts, from the latest Netflix binge watch, to Pokémon and the lyrics of Radiohead.
最近的课程包括“权力的游戏中的政治”,，探讨了现实世界意识形态之间的冲突, and “The Dude Abides,"这是一门以cult的最爱为基础的哲学课程, “The Big Lebowski,这句话借鉴了道和伯特兰·罗素的教义. 它声称为学生提供“万物理论”.“还有更严肃的票价，比如外科手术和量子计算.
这些及格或不及格的课程让学生们探讨共同的兴趣, such as Harry Potter, knitting and Magic the Gathering, 或者从同学的独特经历中学习, 比如一名退伍军人教授的创伤后应激障碍课程. Those who develop the courses (under the guidance of a faculty member) gain an in-depth understanding of the subject, plus the ability to organize and communicate their thoughts and stimulate a conversation.
5. Bring healthcare to a remote African village
At the UC Education Abroad Program, the largest study abroad program in the country, participants do a lot more than sightsee. 他们建立了跨大陆和跨文化的联系, 并在他们去的地方做出持久的贡献.
UC study abroad students and alumni established a medical clinic at a mountaintop village in Ghana, started a training program 在印度为妇女和女孩赋权，并成立了一个 conservation organization 现在在五个国家为当地保护生物多样性而努力.
公共服务是正规欧洲杯买球网站使命的一部分, students looking to start nonprofits or make positive social change will find a wealth of resources to help them, from seminars that teach social entrepreneurship to grants for funding service organizations to a ready supply of volunteers.
6. Become a startup tycoon
Got a great idea for a startup? No need to go on Shark Tank. (Though UC Berkeley mechanical engineering senior Lavanya Jawaharlal recently did so, and walked away with $200,000美元创办她的STEM机器人教育企业.)
正规欧洲杯买球网站提供了许多自己的球场比赛 dozens of other ways to access the capital to launch a business.
The House, 这是一家由正规欧洲杯买球网站伯克利分校毕业生创办的风险投资公司, 专门为正规欧洲杯买球网站伯克利分校出生的创业公司提供资金. Startup UCLA, 在7月和8月进行为期10周的新兵训练营，最后是向风险投资者进行推介, 把大学生变成创业公司的老板，只需要把皮肤晒得黝黑.
Every one of UC’s campuses hosts startup incubators where students can learn entrepreneurial skills and find other resources — like help with legal documents and training in building and running an organization — to assist budding moguls in getting their businesses off the ground. Find out more at the innovation and entrepreneurship page.
Credit: Swipe Out Hunger
7. Improve the lives of fellow students
每年都有几十个由学生为学生开办的项目, 其中一些公司的影响远远超出了创始人的设想.
UC undergraduates who spot a need on campus can apply to start a Student Initiated Program, which provides grants and funding, 以及如何管理一个组织和招募志愿者的培训.
其中一些非常成功，已经在全国范围内被采用. Swipe Out Hunger, 由正规欧洲杯买球网站洛杉矶分校的学生雷切尔·苏梅克作为课堂项目发起, now partners with colleges everywhere to address student hunger by letting classmates donate unused meal credits.
Fellow Bruin Ashley Williams started Guardian Scholars to help former foster youth like herself navigate challenges such as where to spend Thanksgiving. The program is now in place at institutions across the country to help former foster youth feel at home.
Credit: Olive Tree Initiative
8. 参与塑造国家或国际关系
In 2007, a group of UC Irvine students from Jewish, Muslim, Christian, 德鲁兹和无宗教背景的人建立了 Olive Tree Initiative with help from the UC Irvine School of Social Sciences' Center for Citizen Peacebuilding. Their mission: gain fact-based knowledge of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through hands-on experiential learning.
Now across the UC system, the program brings dozens of students and faculty on trips to engage with people on all sides of the conflict, 他们中的许多人继续致力于该地区的长期和平建设.
Closer to home, UC Sacramento and UCDC programs offer students the opportunity to work directly with those who are shaping state and national policy. UC’s Presidential Public Service Fellows program, 由正规欧洲杯买球网站校长珍妮特·纳波利塔诺于2016年发起, provides scholarships to students seeking public service internships in the state or nation’s capital.
9. 与冠军大学球队竞争-在球场上或游戏控制台
这里有冠军运动队和金牌运动员, UC boasts recreational facilities where one might run into Olympians Madison Kocian in the weight room or Kathleen Baker doing laps at the pool. 但多亏了两年前在正规欧洲杯买球网站欧文分校开设的最先进的竞技场, UC also leads the way in a hugely popular — if decidedly less athletic — field of competition: collegiate esports.
UC Irvine’s 3,500-square-foot esports facility 是用一排排的高端游戏电脑和游戏机装饰的吗, 校园俱乐部举办活动的社区中心, and a broadcasting station. Teams from across the country come to the center to compete in multiplayer games like “League of Legends,” livestreamed to viewers worldwide. The campus even offers esports scholarships to recruit top players to its own varsity team.
But the arena is open to anyone on campus looking to hone their hand-eye coordination, strategic thinking, teamwork and split-second decision-making, 所有这些都没有受伤的风险，甚至不会出汗.
Graduate student Jonathan Ferry and undergraduate mechanical engineering major Jordyn Brinkley show off the solar-powered drum dryer. Credit: UC Merced
10. Go off the grid
正规欧洲杯买球网站是美国最大的计划中的零能源社区的所在地.S. — UC Davis’s West Village 整个10个校区的系统都承诺要做到这一点 carbon neutral by 2025. 毫无疑问，它是绿色技术的领导者.
At West Village, students live in ultra-efficient housing powered by energy from the sun. 这个社区是新型节能技术的实验室, 比如将校园食物垃圾转化为燃料的沼气池. Nearby is the Honda Smart Home这里是最新奢华低碳生活的典范.
学生在推动零能源创新方面发挥着重要作用. 今年，正规欧洲杯买球网站伯克利分校的学生在全美大学生竞赛中获得了第三名.S. 美国能源部的太阳能十项全能，挑战建造零能耗住宅.
本科生也可以通过诸如 正规欧洲杯买球网站先进技术研究所(正规欧洲杯买球网站太阳能), a nine-campus effort which is pioneering technologies to make solar power the cheapest, cleanest source of energy in the world. 同时，纳波利塔诺总统的碳中和倡议提供 fellowships 资助学生项目，帮助正规欧洲杯买球网站实现零碳目标.
