Goleta, Calif. ? The University of California system is amassing Nobel Prizes at campuses once noted more for beer bashes and odd mascots than academic excellence.

By pumping money into a few select departments and aggressively recruiting top researchers, UC Santa Barbara and UC Irvine have hauled in more Nobels in recent years than UC Berkeley and UCLA, the system’s traditional centers of scholarship.

University leaders said the international prizes had become a badge of prestige for students and validation for professors toiling in relative academic obscurity.

“UC is not just Berkeley,” said Bill Parker, vice chancellor for research at the fast-growing Irvine campus, based in the middle of Orange County’s suburban sprawl. “The campuses formed 30, 40 years ago are now emerging as some of the best in the country.”

Since 1994, UC Irvine researchers have collected three Nobels, including one last week. Santa Barbara has picked up five in the past six years, including two in recent weeks.

By comparison, UCLA received two Nobels in the past decade, while Berkeley — the system’s first campus and consistently rated the nation’s top public university by U.S. News & World Report — collected three.

The stockpiling of prizes in Irvine and Santa Barbara comes after years of steady enrollment growth prompted in part by crowded conditions at other UC sites. Undergraduate applications to UC Santa Barbara have doubled during the past 10 years and the mean GPA of enrolled freshmen has climbed to 3.71.

The 10-campus UC system is the most prestigious of the state’s public education program that also includes California State University and community colleges.

To build their academic reputations, UC administrators have concentrated on a handful of disciplines and avoided spreading resources too thin.

David Gross, left, is one of two University of California Santa Barbara professors to receive Nobel Prizes this year. He's shown earlier this week with researchers Michael Haack, center, Marcus Berg, and 1999 Nobel laureate Gerard't Hooft, right, in Goleta, Calif.

“Not everybody can be good at everything anymore, so you try to focus on those things that have a competitive advantage,” said David Ward, president of the American Council on Education, a Washington-based lobbying group.

Irvine zeroed in on chemistry and molecular and evolutionary biology — though its sports teams haven’t dropped their quirky anteater mascot.

Santa Barbara — home of the Gauchos mascot — went for marine biology, engineering and physics. It began its gradual academic ascendance about two decades ago with the establishment of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics.

Scientists at the institute and the campus’ four other National Science Foundation-sponsored research centers work across various disciplines in ways that are often restricted by traditional boundaries, Kavli Institute director David Gross said.

“There’s a remarkable lack of ego,” said Gross, who won a Nobel last week for his work involving the force that binds the fundamental subatomic particles known as quarks into protons and neutrons.