UC Riverside

College Search & Selection
1

<p>I'd just like to point out that there has been WAY TOO MUCH trash-talking about UC Riverside by a certain poster, and that many of those posts are COMPLETELY EXAGGERATED. UC Riverside is NOT a top school, but it is NOT trash. </p>

<p>For those who are considering Riverside, GO TALK TO students that actually go there. Go take a visit for yourself... approach random students and see what they think about it (a strategy you should use at every college visit). </p>

<p>For those considering the honors program, GO CALL the honors department and ask to talk to several honors kids. I'd also advise you to go to their Honors Program presentation during Admit Day, and talk to the actual students that are in it and have them give you an honest opinion. Obviously there are some positives, otherwise, no honors kid would want to talk positively about the program!!</p>

<p>SEE THINGS FOR YOURSELF FIRSTHAND BEFORE YOU MAKE A JUDGEMENT. MAKE YOUR OWN JUDGEMENT. </p>

<p>Perhaps you'll like it, and perhaps you won't. But one thing is for sure: UC RIVERSIDE DOES NOT DESERVE TO BE DEGRADED AS IT HAS BEEN ON COLLEGECONFIDENTIAL.</p>

2

<p>Well, don't take Stay out of Riverside's word for it. Read what everyone else here thinks of UCR. You can search for "Riverside" yourself and get way more examples, similar to these...</p>

<p>Stealthvs123 wrote “I hear that riverside is basically just a boring campus”
TheCity wrote: Everybody i know who goes to riverside hates it because its in a bad spot, terrible social scene, and its really the **tiest UC school
**Im<em>blue **wrote: Riverside is basically a dump
**Stealthvs123 **wrote: I visted riverside last week and I agree, it IS a total dump. The whole school is very boring with absolutely NO diversity.... kinda obvious judging by the dominant colors of the college. (brownish red).
**Liek0806 **wrote: there's nothing in riverside, very boring
**TheCity **wrote: I have never, ever heard anybody ever reccommend Riverside for anything
**Xmisterpenguin wrote: when I visited UCR, the sky was gray from smog and it was unbearably hot. I felt like ripping my skin out. The air seems.. so dirty….the campus itself hideous…Riverside made me want to die
Undecided **wrote: Why in the world they decided to build in Riverside is totally beyond me. It's a terrible area -- desert-y, gets the worst of the smog, heats up like crazy during the summer and is muggy and otherwise gross during the rest of the seasons... and it's pretty much in the middle of nowhere
**Im</em>blue wrote: My cousin goes to UCR and she hates it there. Why would anyone build a college in such a wasteland, let alone live there? I think Riverside is #1 on the list of most polluted city in the country
Coolman25 wrote: UCR has a terrible reputation and even though they offered me a scholarship and an invite to the honors program, I wouldn't touch it with a fifty foot stick
Bubblesforsale wrote: Riverside has a terrible reputation, but at least you will get a 4.0 without trying too hard. My friend who got mostly C's and D's in high school praises Riverside. He says he's been getting 3.5's.
Sure, it's the dump school for all Non-riverside UC rejects, and the city is pure junk, but there's an upside in living in such a neighborhood. People who can't fit in at any other UC and like to deal with junkies will be satisfied
Uclover8 wrote: i have to admit this…UCR accepts a lot of 2.8-3.0 w gpa students from my school!!!...no joke
**Uclover8 **wrote: my friend got into UCR with 2.9 and 910 on sat
**Bern700 **wrote: riverside is pretty bad. [in “the worst college campuses you have seen]
**Indy787 wrote: I agree, Riverside is horrendous. [in “The worst college campuses you have seen]
The City wrote: i definitely agree with Riverside being atrocious
Rexrun467 wrote: Riverside...more like sewerside. I looked for a river there...dam..no good
Davidav87 wrote: Stay out of Riverside.
Newpswahine wrote: i live in riverside...DEFINITELY STAY OUT OF RIVERSIDE!!
Geminihop **wrote: UCR is getting better...but still not quite up to snuff...IMO better than a Cal State, but i don't really know….I agree with stealth - definitely noo river...pretty ugly area...(do not go more than a coupla miles of campus...it gets kinda scary, especially at night)...
**Sempitern555 wrote: riverside is NOT a good place to go, I would rather transfer than go to UCR
Newpswahine **wrote: people from my school go to UCR because they already live in riverside, so they can live with their parents while going there. they save money that way
**Smogtown wrote: It looks like there is agreement the Riverside detrimental to one's health
Uclover8 wrote: ** riverside = riversDIE
**Liek0806 wrote: **i would take community college over riverside anyday, just because at community college i could always transfer to a better school.
**Fallinwater0328 **wrote: UCLA,UCSD, UCSB are the good ones, Riversids is the worst so far.[in response to Rate the UCs campus from best to worst]
**Afterhours wrote: UCR - If you can ignore the day or two a week when the campus smells like manure then the campus is decent
Smogtown **wrote: I would agree with only one ranking: UCR at the bottom. You can cut the Riverside air with a knife, and you are at a 5-fold higher risk for lung cancer if stay in the inland empire for longer than 4 years.
**Afterhours wrote: riverside is out in the middle of nowhere but the immediate area around the campus is not so bad. there's just nothing to do there, and a lot of the students tend to go home on the weekend which sort of kills the social side of the school. it really is perceived as the last choice school for kids interested in uc's. i know many that have chosen to go to a JC over attending UCR. it might sound like i'm bashing the school, but i've lived in so cal almost my entire life and that's the honest perception around here.
Alicantekid **wrote: but the area of Riverside isn't so great or exciting. It's inland, so you aren't close to the beach or anything
**Bubblesforsale wrote: But the repuatation of UCR is WAY below any other UC, and you should really consider UCI, UCSD, or UCLA (of course of u get accepted, go to UCLA). My friend got 2 D's in high school and got a 2.33 in Senior year, but still made it to UCR. Riverside is totally desperate for good students, and just about offer everyone a scholarship. And yes, it is the very few good students that put UCR on the map. The MAJORITY of the students there were forced to go because no better UC accepted them. In SoCal, most of the students at UCI were forced to attend because they were rejected to UCLA. Likewise, UC Riverside's students were rejected to UC Irvine. If Berkeley and LA are tier 1, and SD were tier 2, then all the other UC's xcept for Riverside would be tier 3. Riverside would be in a class of its own.
Joemama wrote: UCR suffers mostly because it is in hot, smoggy Riverside, probably the worst location of all the UCs, which tend to be in beautiful locations close to or directly on the coast.
Fei **wrote: yea seriously I wonder what the hell UC people were thinking when they picked Riverside..
**Bubblesforsale wrote: UCR does get all the pollution and crap from LA. It's not aestically appealing, and that further degrades the quality of the students.
Every other UC is located in a very nice area. Especially SC and SD. And that's one reason they are growing faster than the other UC's.
And also, most of the students at UCR smoke, making it even more clear that the school isnt good</p>

3

<p>it's not just people on college confidential that have been saying bad stuff about UCR... i've heard all the bad stories from most people from cali i know</p>

4

<p>I have to agree with the above statements</p>

<p>I go to a school in inner city Los Angeles</p>

<p>I have seen some of the most AVERAGE students end up attending Riverside. It really is more than a Cal State sometimes. I have never heard a person from my school say that they were going to attend Riverside with a smile on their face. One girl I knew went because she was rejected from UCLA and Berkeley for engineering. She was like "I don't want to go" but she's a trooper. Its the only UC that is ranked in the 80's by US News and World report. That just tells you that they are not as high caliber as the other UC's. I have visited every UC in California and I will tell you that Riverside is the ugliest campus out of the nine. (well ten now) UC Santa Cruz is not up there with Davis, SB, and Irvine as far as the 3 tier of the UC's (san diego being 2nd tier, and UCLA and Berkeley being 1st tier) but santa cruz is a beautiful campus with those tall redwoods and the brand new buildings. Plus they're the banana slugs!!!! That is so cool. But worry not! Now that Merced is here, Riverside won't be the worst UC! At least until Merced gets their act together.</p>

5

<p>That should say, "It really is more like a Cal State sometimes."</p>

6

<p>As a newer member of this forum I would like to point out that indeed UCR is a dump, that is, nesting ground for the those individuals that failed to aspire for a real higher education.</p>

<p>UCR is so bad that Riverside can be interchanged for popular curse words.</p>

<p>Example. "Riverside" is used in this movie line in place a more colorful metaphor:</p>

<p>"Listen up man, me an' my homeboy
are in some serious "Riverside." We're in
a car we gotta get off the road,
pronto! I need to use your garage
for a couple hours."</p>

7

<p>i was expecting this thread to come up</p>

8

<p>riverside is a "community college" in a sense</p>

9

<p>kfc4u is completely right. If the school is a match, then why not? It does not need to be bashed. </p>

<p>I live in Moreno Valley, not too far from UCR. I honestly say that I live in a really safe neighborhood. </p>

<p>Plus, what is beauty. UCSB is called by us Gauchos as the communist looking school on the Pacific. We actually talk about how Manzanita Village looks like an Ikea designer barfed out a building. Or how the arts building looks like a Jewish ghetto in Nazi Germany. But, that is not why I go to the school. </p>

<p>The point is a school should be choosen not by how the buildings look, but "fit" and the academics. </p>

<p>If you hate UCR fine, but don't bash an entire region and university that you have little contact with.</p>

10

<p>ucsb_dude, i felt sorry for you that some posters were so into UCR that they wanted you to publicly apologize for something that your friend told you. </p>

<p>once i read the post (on the other thread), i realized there was a disconnect. your friend is a 3rd year and the other poster was referring to 4th and 5th year, so it wasn't lying, but rather miscommunication, but the poster had to insist otherwise. </p>

<p>personally, i think riverside has its negatives (and its positives too), but if it is so bad, it would've been closed down a long time ago. perhaps it is very undesirable for the vast majority of the students here on CC, but it is an option or even an opportunity for 15000 others.</p>

11

<p>kfc4u:</p>

<p>Thanks. Honestly, yeah, UCR (like all colleges) has both negatives and positives. </p>

<p>This has some personal ties to me as well since I live in the region and my father went to school there. I guess I am really sick and tired of people calling where I live the "valley of the mud people" and my father's alma mater a hick school. I dunno.</p>

<p>But, yeah once again, thanks.</p>

12

<p>I don't appreciate my post being taken out of context, BewareofRiverside. That is NOT what I think of UCR, that is what I think of Riverside. Small distinction? Perhaps. But that has very little to do with the school because most students won't be there during the summer.</p>

<p>I respect UCR as a campus. I believe it was created with the UC directives in mind, and I believe that it's one of the few that sticks with it (word of mouth says that UCR and UCI are the last that hold to those guarantees that the UC system offered, though that may have stopped after '04). When I took my classes there during the summer, I had no problem with the professors or the material in the classes.</p>

<p>I personally was not attracted to UCR, but just because I didn't like it doesn't mean that no one else does. I've seen too many posters who push their experience as the only possible experience anyone else could have, and I don't think that's fair in the least. Did you know that <em>gasp</em> there are people who aren't impressed with Harvard, Yale or Princeton? That there are people who are not only happy to go to UCR, but feel blessed to be able to? They aren't all 'idiots,' either, and going to UCR does not consign you to failure for the rest of your life.</p>

<p></p>

<p>Anyway, thanks KFC4U for bringing this to a new post. UCR definitely does not deserve the bashing it gets.</p>

13

<p>I would like to see most of you people excel in UCR's Biodmed program while being in the honors department. This combined program is probably more difficult than a similar system at any other uc, even the flagships. UCI bashes UCR because the school is perceived as being of about the same quality, and uci does not like this one bit. UCR has good departments in many areas, good but not always top 20 best grad programs in many areas (like most of UC's), and a quality engineering department. </p>

<p>I've lived in Riverside my entire life, and it is alright. Parts of it are not so good, but the same is true of LA and New York. Riverside is no Boston, LA, or New York in terms of excitement, but it is not a lifeless rural town. It is a city of about 300,000 or more people and growing quickly, with lots of quirks and unique qualities. Although it is "in the middle of nowhere," it is equal distance from everywhere.</p>

<p>I remember seeing a grad from ucr go to harvard or yale law, or maybe it was a few each. Now, i'm not saying many people do this, but a few do. The same is true of top grad and business programs- my friend, a UCR psych grad, is getting a full ride to UPenn to study with one of the most famous living psychologysts. One can do well here, and then go to great places afterward.</p>

<p>While it is not a top 30 school, UCR gets bashed far more than it deserves to be.</p>

14

<p>It does come down to the person again. If one is the charismatic, ambitious type, most likely one will succeed.</p>

15

<p>I am an incoming freshmen at UCR. Some of the students really are boneheads! I went to an orientation session a couple of days ago. The students were grouped according to their majors and recieved tours from current ucr students.My counselor was a complete idiot. He told my entire group he had a 2.0 gpa, and that he partied like a business major. Then he said studying engineering is worth it because he is going to make 200,000 dollars right out of school!</p>

16

<p>I don't see a problem with Riverside. I mean, if someone wants to go there...why should anyone else care? Meh, people can make their own decisions about schools they want to go to. One of friends goes there and he's going to be a third year and all he has to say about Riverside is that, "It'd be a great school--if it wasn't in Riverside." So I guess according to lots of you as well it's not about the school itself, but rather the area.</p>