minorth1ng

Gets too clique-ey

When visiting other campuses, greek life includes rivalries and friendships that extend beyond apparent social boundaries- people from different organizations get invited to each other's parties, the greek community stands together and represents itself well to the school. Riverside's greek community thrives on reputations for mischief, and not even fun mischief. The greek life does not add much to the college experience that you wouldn't get otherwise. Usually it just gives you fees, suspensions, and a bad reputation.

This campus's hated by the ACLU, look it up

You are not allowed to sneeze without permission. For a public university, this is unacceptable.

an extension of high-school, on par with community college

UCR's national academic ranking has dropped about 20 places in the last 5 years or so. So maybe the reasons I rank it so low are why they have dropped in ranking, who knows. The professors let you know how much they don't want to be there. The teaching assistants are very defensive, i.e. if you ask a question they don't know the answer to, then they will not like you. There is some interesting curriculum here with uninspired educators to go with it. The difficulty drops compared to high-school, so there is no incentive to really learn. This place is a well-hidden academic joke.

Arsonists, rapists, and thieves love it here at UCR

Every week the UCPD sends an email with reports of crime on and off campus. Every week you hear something worse than the week before. It starts off with a report of how many cars had windows smashed in before everything but the parking permit was stolen. Next, you will hear of rapes that occurred at knife-point or gun-point (does it really matter which?) on campus- such as on the second floor of the library or in the bathroom of the rec-center. Eventually you will hear about the pedestrian who was shot and killed during a fire-fight between the cops and some random thug at the local Denny's (it's at the University Village about a 3 minute walk from the edge of campus). Suicide attempts happen during spring quarter, and people start setting the campus on fire. No joke. An entire wing of the dorms burned down because of an arson, and molotov cocktails were found spread around campus behind classrooms.

there is no middle ground

It gets up to 115 degrees between spring and fall, so get used to that, and it is so, so far away from the nearest beach. then between fall and spring it drops down to a frosty 33 degrees, so no snow, but you will be cold. Lovely, right? Riverside is right beneath some small mountains, so all of the city smog gets trapped right here on campus, and if there is a fire anywhere nearby expect ashes to rain down- it will happen. No humidity, just dry air.