University of California - Riverside

UC Riverside is the fastest growing university in the UC System. A medical school will be opened in a few years and a School of Public Policy is in the works. It is now rated among the top 20 universities in the country by The Washington Monthly (which is actually a more accurate ranking system than U.S. News and World Report because it doesn't take into account how much the students give back after graduation). It's true that UC Riverside has a reputation for low school spirit since most of the students attending there did not choose it as their first choice, but this has changed dramatically in the past two to three years. The campus is nice, although many of the buildings look a bit sterile and out of style (though they were probably nice back in the sixties when they were built). I have found that most students really like the school and their professors (as a side note: a LARGE percentage of the faculty were educated at ivy leagues! Check out the faculty profiles in a coupl... Read more

Some might say a 4-star rating for UC Riverside is much too high, and those people would be a lot of current students and alumni of the school. But I gave it a four star rating because I attended here as an undergraduate although I really didn't want to however I did get good education and there were great proffesors there. However UCR has problems with its image as it is the least prestigious campus in the UC system. The school's nickname is "UC Rejects". The campus is very small (the smallest of all UC campuses) and the architechture is boring and uninspiring and some of the school like the pe building looks like its a high school and there is a football field with bleachers which a local high school plays ther games it. However the campus has made a great deal of improvements from when I went there. The school is also located in a not so great part of Riverside and the city of Riverside is by no means exciting and is by no means a great college town like Boston. School spirit is ver... Read more