University of California-Irvine Top Questions

Most students here care about their academics .

Fun, caring, outgoing, smart, and very well-rounded individuals!

I spent a lot of my time in the Cross Cultural Center and with activisty kids who liked stuff like I do. I would have to say there was a slight separation between the kids who did more activist, multicultural type things like me and the kids who did the Greek Life thing. Not that you could not do both, but most of the time there you could sense the separation. The cool thing about UCI having just basically one big campus in a circle is that it is possible to bump into friends that have different majors than you on the way to class. For example even though I was at the school of social science, most of my friends were in engineering and bio sci. That is very different from other schools with campuses of different schools that are very separated and far from each other.

Diversity is one of UCI's strengths, however the Hispanic cohort is underrepresented there. Rednecks probably feel out of place at UCI. A majority of UCI students are from California, and political views vary widely as also do their financial backgrounds.

UCI is pretty diverse. It reminds me of high school at times, because certain groups will not interact with others. I wish there are more visible students with disabilities on campus. Although there has been some promotion about disability issues from Disability Service Center, I do not see a lot of interaction between students with disability and general student body.

Most students wear flip flops year round. I know I did!... I feel like I met a very diverse group of students throughout my four years at UCI. There are just so many different organizations on campus that I think it would be difficult to feel unable to fit in somewhere. I remember feeling like the student body was generally apathetic to political/social issues.

UCI is definitely racially diverse, but it's not necessarily the diversity that you would see in most of America. There are a lot of Asian people and quite a few Caucasians, but African Americans and Hispanics are definitely in the minority on this campus. The races generally stick together, probably accentuated by all the ethnic student organizations, but I never witnessed any animosity. Because it is southern California, people are pretty chill in fashion style. Sometimes people where PJs or business style clothes, but most wear shirt (which may have UCI on it), jeans, and flip-flops. The vast majority of UCI students are from California, but a few out-of-staters trickle through, including a significant showing from Hawaii. Of the Californians, some are from northern Caifornia, but most are from southern California either near LA, in the OC, or in the Inland Empire. Financially, most of the students are middle-class, but there are always some fancy cars in the student parking lots.

Because of my interest in issues of race, class and gender, I was involved at the Cross-Cultural Center where I worked and hung out with people of diverse background. UCI is quite unique in that it has a large active community of Muslim Americans. I got to know many active, smart, and funny Muslim American men and women. Some people might feel like it is harder to fit in a diverse pool of people, because people are organized in cultural specific groups. But I feel like I learn more by being with specific groups and being in seemingly different groups. When the Cross-Cultural Center hosts the Pictionary tournament, everyone's competitive spirit comes alive. It is definitely a friendly competition but it gets harder and harder to win every year. Most students are from California, with the majority from Southern California, a good amount from Northern California and few from outside of California. A bulk of the students live around campus but a fair amount are commuters. So it is sometimes hard to meet people if you don't have a class with them or is part of the same student organization.

The UCI student body is pretty tolerant and very easy going. The two groups that caused the most "disturbances" (in the sense that they drew a crowd and spoke passionately on both sides) on campus were the Muslim Student Union and the Jewish groups. Other than that, there was no major tension between groups on campus. Everyone gets along for the most part. Students are very casual to class. Most students live in jeans and sweatshirts with the occasional "dressy day". Most students seem to come from middle class families. I once had a professor say that we should not aspire to be or make more than our parents, because chances are most of us would be working in retail. At the time I thought he was just a pompous jerk who loved nothing better than to talk about himself, but in a way, he is right. A lot of jobs out there today are highly specialized. Our parents generation had to sturggle for everything. Our generation has been largely provided for and because of that we are a little naive and spoiled. We get a job in college working at a clothing store and then after graduation we keep it because the struggle of obtaining that dream job is too daunting. Some of us do move on and land that dream job or at least begin to work our way up the career ladder, but the rest seem stuck in a stage of wanting to be better, but afraid to take the chance, or ignorant as to how to start. College has taught us how to think and apply, but it doesn't really teach us how to land that dream job.

I would say in general the student body at UC Irvine is not very much political minded. I know people that do have strong opinions about issues but are not that vocal and proactive as they could be just merely because of the environment. Although there have been rallies, protests, and demonstrations on campus I feel that it is really not very often compare to more liberal UC campuses. Since UC Irvine is in Orange Country and Irvine itself (which seriously is a little suburban bubble) students are not as exposed as they could be to controversial issues as they ultimately will not impact them one way or another. UC Irvine is pretty accepting of any student and their background. In terms of finances most of the people I knew had jobs to support themselves as well as having the parentals to support them with the raising tuition costs. There are some people, just because the campus is in Orange County that did show of their wealth with designer labels and luxury cars.