<p>For students who want a commuter school - and there are some- UCI is a very good option.
I have friends who attended UCI years ago, and it was the same story then. Kids often rented houses together on Balboa Island for the winter ( reasonable rates then) or in other local neighborhoods, and often worked while going to school. It's certainly not the college experience most parents on this board seem to want for their kids, but it does appeal to a certain kind of student. It's almost more of the kind of life that graduate students experience.</p>