Also how fun is it to be an Anteater! I think that’s fun.
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My son said he liked the Irvine campus better than UCLA. Maybe he was having a moment of being a contrary teenager, since my husband really wants him to go to UCLA, but did not even want to take him on a tour of Irvine 
By commuter school reputation, do you mean that a lot of students are from the LA area and actually commute from home or go home on weekends, and it has that commuter school feeling of people maintaining friendships from high school? Or do you mean that a lot of students live off campus? I do not know much about Irvine.
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Commuter school meaning a lot of students go home for the weekend so the campus is very quiet. I also know that there are local students that will commute to UCI but probably not a large majority.
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also went to UCI for grad schools. Always take grad-school impressions of an institution as an undergrad with a large, massive block of salt. Life is different. That said, when I went UCI had just gotten a couple nobel prizes and were gaining in visibility. There has been a massive turnover in previous gen faculty with some outstanding young faculty in the last 15 years. didn’t love Irvine. Loved easy access to the coast. And amazed at how hard it is to get into these days…
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My daughter’s HS as well! Admits to UCB are a shocking 20-25 percent, and UCLA admits around 9-10 percent. This was the case even when UCB had similar acceptance rates as UCLA. We are in Southern CA.
Good to know – maybe I shouldn’t be so dismissive of my husband’s supposedly out of date knowledge of the school he attended 
Here in the Bay Area we just do not hear a lot about Irvine. I would guess that a lot of kids from our HS check the box on the UC application as a backup but are not serious about attending… so it’s possible that after seeing low yield over the years, Irvine would accept fewer kids from our school, too.
Santa Barbara seems like by far the most popular mid-tier UC choice among kids and families we know… maybe because we know a lot of orchestra families, and it’s supposed to have great music programs.
I hate LA!
Longtime SF Giants fan!!!
UC Clovis?
My cousin lives in Irvine and we visit their family quite often. It’s a great place, full of parks and trails. Always made me envious how spacious it is compared to our cramped Bay Area neighborhood. Very diverse and I think it’s the safest city in America for like forever.
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Irvine is in southern Orange County and is an hour from San Diego, an hour from San Bernardino and an hour from LA. If you look at the feeder regions, you will see that 17K of the 23K undergraduate students came from southern California counties.
As far as housing, 2 years of on-campus housing is guaranteed (if the application is completed by May 2, 2023). That said, I believe the majority of sophomores apply to live in (ACC)- privately managed apartment complexes on university property. There are also a lot of private apartments (owned mostly by Irvine Co) within walking distance of campus. The students are living in Irvine M-F, but choose to go home on weekends.
Yeah, I am a dyed in the wool Northern CA person, and to me, LA and Orange County and a lot of other Southern CA areas all run together in my mind… I realize this is not really correct, though! Sorry to oversimplify the geography and thanks for the extra info 
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UCB L&S CS did not previously admit by (pre-)major (the new procedure with high-demand L&S majors is new for this admission cycle), so that student would have been admitted to UCB L&S, which was likely less difficult than getting direct admission to CS/CSE at some other UC campuses.
Saaaaammme, tho 
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In the 2022 cycle, LS CS admit rate was just 2.9% which was even less than last year’s EECS admit rate of ~4%. What you are saying was true in 2021 and prior years but not last year even though they did not have direct admits last cycle.
Admission rate alone does not tell the full story, since UCB L&S with intended CS may have attracted a relatively weak applicant pool.
That is accurate but I would bet that the average LS CS admit pool last year would have been far stronger than LS CS admit pool in prior years. They basically cut the program 4x - essentially the bottom of the bottom in the admit pool would have been in the top quartile of admits in any prior years.
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Think of Berkeley relative to Santa Rosa, Sacramento, Stockton and Los Gatos.
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Many of my SoCal friends won’t send their kids to Berkeley or SF due to the crime and homelessness. Three friends came back from Cal visits completely turned off and said they would not feel safe sending their kids up there. They all went on separate trips and are not part of the same social circles.
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Fair enough - not everyone thrives in the same environment. I have lived in the Berkeley area for years and have not personally felt unsafe here, but I am used to urban environments and they generally suit me better than suburban/rural areas. I’m OK with the trade offs that go with that. Not everyone is.
But of course the Bay Area is far more than Berkeley and SF. Those are just two cities. There’s Orinda, Albany, Walnut Creek, Santa Clara and all kinds of places that are generally low crime/high wealth areas. Not everything here is Berkeley and Oakland. There is a lot of diversity in living environments, some very much suburban and some even a bit more rural (like CrocketT maybe).
And a lot of people seem to like a certain college in the Palo Alto area- and it seems safe enough there.
So sure, it’s not for everyone perhaps. But the people who live here tend to really enjoy living here. That’s why we keep living here despite things like high rent/prices and other possible downsides (also with exceptions, there are no absolutes).
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I understand what you are trying to say but, realistically, a student (especially a freshman) is going to spend the majority of their time in Berkeley and Oakland.
It is kind of like telling a USC student not to worry about the surrounding area because Beverly Hills, Manhattan Beach and Irvine are safe.