UC Davis students, what are your opinions of your school?? Of course college is what you make it to be, but how much does UC Davis offer for the fun/social aspect? I have heard that the school can get somewhat boring as well as the parties. Is rushing and joining a Frat the best way to meet new people and go to social events? Also, how are intramurals? I love soccer, so a soccer club, intramurals, or anything like that would be great.
It’s a good school and I’ve met some great people here, but I don’t really enjoy being here that much. I originally wanted to go to UCI since it’s closer to home and offers more Asian languages than UCD, but I didn’t get accepted there so I came to UCD instead. I can’t say anything about the social aspect though since I’m not a social person to begin with.
Thanks for the response! Can you explain why you don’t really enjoy it? Is it the location or is there just an overall lack of school involvement? I hope to do intramurals and clubs, so have you done any of these things? Thanks again
I’d say that the thing with Davis’ social life is that you essentially have to make your own fun. Whether that’s finding something fun to do with friends (and trust me, you can find things to do), joining clubs and being active in them, joining IM sports, going to parties, or whatever else floats your boat. There’s something for everyone if you’re willing to look for it. That said, if someone wants the big city life, Davis probably isn’t the best choice for them to begin with.
As far as social life, I’m far from a social butterfly but I do have my close friends and hang out with them on the weekends. All but a couple of us are pretty introverted, so usually we end up watching movies, playing games, or some such. There’s a party scene around if you want to partake in it, but it’s just as easy to avoid it if you don’t.
For clubs, I’m fairly active in CS club and am technically a member of a couple others that I haven’t been able to be active in for a while due to other obligations. There are tons of clubs around, and at least for CS club there are various types of events that are held. We have general meetings (usually followed by a mixer afterward), social events (board and video game nights are common), destressors around exam times, and various things going on within the subcommittees. I don’t know exactly how other clubs are run, but hopefully that at least gives you a general idea of what it might be like.
Awesome, thanks for the response. Sorry if this question seems naive, but I’m not very familiar with the area. Are there any hiking places and is going to SF and Tahoe common(or leaving campus to do stuff in general)? I would definitely want to join some sort of soccer club that plays and watches games on the weekend and a video game club.
There are a lot of UCD students from the SF area, so they go home often, and for students not from SF, occasionally they go there if they have time. Clubs like the Ski or Snowboard Club and ethnic clubs often go to Tahoe during winter quarter (usually around January-early February). Sacramento is also about a 30 minute drive away, and there’s the Davis-Berkeley shuttle that will take you to Berkeley. For hiking, check out [this page](Hiking and Backpacking - Davis - LocalWiki).
The only video game club I know of is the LoL club, and as for soccer, there’s the IM (intramural) soccer club (divided into two separate clubs for men and women).
Awesome, thanks. I’m assuming there isn’t much elevation change? So is the school pretty dead on the weekends?
@bigmike97: As I have said, I originally wanted to go to UCI because it offered more Asian languages than UCD. I originally wanted to go to UCI so I could do a East Asian Studies/Japanese/Korean triple major (or just a Japanese/Korean double major), but I didn’t get accepted there. At UCD, the only two East Asian languages they offer are Japanese and Chinese, whereas at UCI, they have Japanese, Chinese, and Korean. They also have Vietnamese language courses which UCD lacks. UCD’s East Asian Studies program also is very lackluster and very small compared to UCI, UCLA, and UCB. Every person here whom I mentioned my major to when asked didn’t know what it was, so I often felt left out in my major before I changed it to Japanese since I didn’t know anyone else who was an EAS major like me.
As for clubs, I usually stick to ethnic/interest clubs like Japanese American Student Society, So Kpop, and recently, Korean American Student Association.
I rarely went on campus on the weekends, but I guess you could say it is pretty dead, since there’s usually not anything much going on on campus during the weekends (unless it’s Picnic Day or there are games going on).
Davis is essentially pretty flat, yes. But if you go out to Lake Berryessa for hiking, there’s a supposedly strenuous 4 mile long loop trail nearby called the Stebbins Cold Canyon Reserve Trail with an elevation gain of 1500 ft. From what someone said on Daviswiki (now called Localwiki, I guess), if you go about the trail backwards, you supposedly get an elevation gain of 900 ft within the first hour rather than experience the elevation change gradually.
Cool. I guess I don’t know if it is typical for a school to be dead on the weekend…and how competitive do intramurals get?
For the video game question, there’s also a Nintendo club and a Smash Bros club. Actually, the Smash Bros club had a Melee tournament with the CS club a couple weeks back…that’s how I found out that they exist, haha. If you’re interested in any aspect of video game development (not limited to coding), CS club has a game dev committee that you can join.
Haha cool. CS as in counter strike? And any FIFA players?
The CS club is the Computer Science club.
@PhantomVirgo is right, you really have to make your own fun because the campus is huge!
My dd loves Davis! Neither she nor my son liked the Irvine feel, it was too “commuter” and the campus lacked warmth (and biking the area would be hard). Visit Davis and you’ll see the activities posted everywhere and everything is open late in the college town. I just held a coffee chat with Davis’ parents on March-14, in our town. Most of the parents were parents of freshman and said that their kids loved the school and campus, and a parent of a male freshman said that his Davis friends were like “getting an instant family”.
There are lots of clubs for everyone and someone is always playing a sport. (If you sit in your room and complain about shoulda, woulda, coulda, then of course you are going to dislike Davis.)
My dd is a junior and, unfortunately for us, we can never catch her on the weekends-that’s why the campus is empty. She’s always somewhere, with a club, on a hike, bike, kayak, skis or on BART. The intramurals for her sport were difficult to go to because she had an inconsistent schedule, so she has a group of friends that go out and workout together. She’s been to Tahoe, Yosemite, Sequoia, 'Frisco, Berkeley, Napa, and has visited friends in Sonoma, etc. She goes to concerts in “Sac” and Berkeley. She is trying to get into the tractor-driving class but doesn’t have enough seniority yet. There is also a very popular beer-making class and learning the history of Beer, and she can’t get into that class yet. She did get into the Fairy tale class which she really liked. Since her major is intense-NPB, she says she needs to “chill” on the weekends by leaving campus with her friends.
The wineries pay for a lot of buildings, so the facilities are very nice.
Go on davis wiki to get more information.
Good luck!
Check out the Arboretum!
Wow, awesome reply! I guess all the people who hate on Davis are the ones who don’t take advantage of what it has to offer. It’s awesome to hear all the places she has gone to, I hope to do similar things. Hopefully there are more concerts, that would be awesome. I’m assuming that the big trips to Yosemite and all those places you mentioned are rare events? Do you know how the hiking is? I’m not really familiar with the area, but I’ve heard it’s rather flat and a “cow town.” So I don’t know if there are many nice places to hike nearby? Thanks a lot!
@BigMike97, dd goes during warm and cold weather to the Sierras with whatever club happens to be going. Many of the students bike around the arboretum and into town. Serious hiking is saved for mountain trips. Day trips to Berkeley and the Bay area occur often. She is never in town on the weekends!
Hiking can be found, but in Davis, it’s flat; that’s why there are 40K bikes on campus. The activities center has leaflets for Davis groups going on “location” to the mountains and local foothills (Sutter’s creek, etc.)
Awesome, you are making Davis sound better and better
Great replies, really helped me. 
Thanks everyone.