<p>UC Irvine is a crappy little school located in Hell-on-Earth.</p>
<p>I was a graduate student there for 2 years and taught classes throughout those 2 years. Coming from an out-of-state university there are a bunch of things that are wrong with the campus.</p>
<p>First off all let's start with academics. Compared to my undergraduate experience the classes are slightly dumbed down (although a few of the upper level classes use really bad textbooks so maybe you could consider those as harder?). The students tend to be lazy and actually try to fanagle the answers out of the teachers (I thought we learned what integrity was in elementary school...). Some are even stupefied by the easiest directions. I had one student in my class that didn't even know how to pour a liquid. A friend I knew had a student that didn't even know what a mean was (and after being told it meant average the student had to ask how to compute the average of 3 numbers). So much for the California educational system lolz. These dumbasses would be weeded out during admissions at a real university.</p>
<p>Next on the list of things wrong is the social scene. If you want to go to a school where everyone goes home on the weekends, and parents drop off and pick up their children like high school this is the place for you. It's almost impossible to grow into an adult if you're still living with your parents (like the school's major demographic), so have fun playing with a bunch of little kiddies. But I guess that's part of growing up in Orange County -- being a spoiled brat that needs his mommy and daddy to give him money. I'm not saying everyone at Irvine is like this, but a large majority is.</p>
<p>Also, if you want a sense of community, forget about it. The only places to go within close distance to the school is a couple of strip malls and fast food joints. And the only bar is actually on campus. This may sound nice, but due to it being on campus it cannot serve liquor and they close at midnight. Oh yeah, and they only sell overpriced snooty beers.</p>
<p>The library also sucks. You want a book? Good luck as it's probably their only copy and most likely it is checked out or has been missing for a year or two and nobody noticed until you asked for it.</p>
<p>So yeah, pretty much the only thing going for UCI is the asian population. It is great going to school at a diverse campus, but there are other campuses with asian populations that are also relatively large that offer much more.</p>
<p>So yeah...that's my take on UCI from a student/teacher's perspective.</p>