In the US state of California, the University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system. The eight campuses—Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, and Santa Cruz—as well as other research facilities and academic exchange programs make up the system, which has its main office in Oakland. The institution is the land-grant university of the state. Most UC campuses are consistently ranked among the top colleges in the world by major magazines. Along with Berkeley, seven of UC’s campuses have been admitted to the Association of American Universities since the 1970s. UC was one of the founding members of the organization in 1900. As Public Ivies, Berkeley, Davis, Santa Cruz, Irvine, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, and San Diego are regarded as such, making California the state with the most number of universities in the country. Almost all academic fields have a substantial number of notable faculty members on UC campuses, and as of 2021, 71 Nobel Prizes had been awarded to UC researchers and academics.