<p>As a current student there, I have to say it’s not a bad school. Believe me, I struggled with choosing it over the whole rank thing and I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t the last place I thought I’d go.</p>
<p>The city of Riverside is far from beautiful. You can’t go outside in Riverside without seeing a giant mountain of dirt. It gets extremely hot here because it’s a desert. There aren’t very many “fun” things to do or amazing places to eat here, however, it’s not too far from places that do have those things.</p>
<p>Aside from the negatives, there are much more positives. Even though the city isn’t very pretty, the students that attend UCR are really amazing. Not to say everyone is nice, but the majority of the students here are friendly and care about their schoolwork. Even though it’s low ranked as a UC, it holds its students to the same academic standards as other UCs (except for maybe Berkeley or UCLA). Basically, you’ll be challenged just as much. People often forget that the UC system is considered the best public school system in the world. UCR is a young school and will soon have a medical school. That’s pretty impressive if you ask me.</p>
<p>As for getting classes, I haven’t had too much trouble but it’s not nearly as bad as some other schools. It’s pretty much the same at all UCs from what I’ve heard from my friends. It depends on how hard you work because your enrollment time/date is based on units. If I take 12 units a quarter, I’m obviously not going to get an earlier time/date than a person that takes 15 or 18 a quarter. Similarly to most, if not all UCs and CSUs, not every single class is offered each quarter. If students fail a class for their major and it’s not offered the following quarter, of course they’ll be behind and not graduate on time. If a student takes 12 units a quarter and doesn’t get 180-216 units by the end of Spring their fourth year, of course they won’t graduate on time. It’s up to the student to make sure they graduate on time. No major is going to specifically design its required courses to make students spend the rest of their lives in Riverside.</p>
<p>Why is UCR considered so low as opposed to other UCs?
Until recently, UCR, UCSC, and UCM were all UCs in which people who met the minimum requirement for UC were guaranteed admission. They were quite literally back-up schools. UCSC was the first to remove itself from this and UCR followed. Last time I checked, UCM is still one of them. Now, you have to apply to UCR to get in. A lot of the students didn’t like UCR because they had no choice but to go there, but as of 2011, everyone who was accepted to UCR had to have applied to UCR.</p>
<p>Addressing some of the things other people said:
Immature people. I guarantee that there are immature people everywhere you go. Some just have higher high school/community college GPAs than others and get into better schools.</p>
<p>Commuters. Yeah, a lot of people here are from SoCal and go home on weekends. I’m from the Bay Area (NorCal) and I was stuck here but that’s when you bond with the other NorCal people. A lot of the SoCal people who left on weekends often felt left out when they came back because everyone who stayed always became so much closer.</p>
<p>Non-rigorous courses(CHASS). If you major in History, your courses are obviously going to be less rigorous than if you were an Electrical Engineering major. It would be the same if you went to any other school. Guaranteed. I’m sorry that you think receiving an Art History degree should have the same difficulty as obtaining a degree as a Biochemical Engineer.</p>
<p>On a side note, I can’t help but notice that many of the responses of people who are attempting to deter you from UCR are riddled with grammatical errors. It annoyed me enough to actually reply to this thread.</p>
<p>This wasn’t the only school I applied to. I had the choice to go here and I don’t think it was a bad one. Personally, I wanted to try living in Southern California and liked the diversity of students this school had. I’m not telling you to choose UCR, but it’s not as bad as everyone else here is saying it is. At the end of the day, college is what you make of it. You can go somewhere with a negative attitude, not make any friends, and think you’re better than the students and even the school, but that’s on you and you’re missing out. Good luck to you wherever you choose to go! I’m sure you’ll do well and have a blast wherever you end up.</p>