(UCR/UC-Riverside) I wasted a year of my life at the

Survey is Blank

Describes the student body as: , , , ' color='class=grade' > Describes the faculty as: , , ' color='class=grade' >

Male

Quite Bright

Educational Quality	F

Excess Competition	C

He cares more about Friendliness than the average student.

Date: Oct 20 2005
Major: (This Major's Salary over time)
I wasted a year of my life at the University of California, Riverside. I'm not actually a current student at UCR, but there was no category for "dropped out and transferred elsewhere." I came in as a transfer student. I might as well have spent another year at community college (which by then I knew so well that I could've given tours of and done recruiting for.) I want to make a t-shirt that says "I DROPPED OUT OF UC RIVERSIDE AND ALL I GOT WAS ACCEPTED TO IRVINE AND SANTA BARBARA!!!" I had been accepted to Irvine when I initially applied (denied by Berkeley and UCLA, which is not something I'm proud of,) and Riverside and chose Riverside because it was a little closer to home. This wound up being its best feature because when after 2 1/2 quarters I withdrew and went home with my tail between my legs amid a growing crime rate and a complete disgust with campus. For starters, my first advice I received against UCR came from my then-girlfriend who grew up in the area. She called it "Rubidoux Continuation High School." She was partly right. With all due respect to those who go to UCR and are not complete idiots (in fact, there were a few who were quite bright and who were able to adapt and thrive...good for them!) this was not only Rubidoux Continuation High School but it appeared they accepted the continuation students from Ramona, Moreno Valley, Arlington, North, Colton, Rialto, San Bernardino...you get the picture! I wasn't in a "clique" so getting into a social group was hard. I don't do the Greek thing (my medications I take make it so that I can't drink, so I have no interest being involved with groups who tend to stay true to their stereotype and party a lot.) And while there were tons of clubs advertising on campus, their outreach efforts were mediocre at best. Further, whenever I had a question about something, I was told "the answer's on the website." I spent hours picking apart UCR's website looking for answers only to find time after time that I'd missed something. If ONE person, a counselor, someone in administration, someone in the transfer center, a librarian, some guy drinking from a flask sitting in the University Ave. underpass under the 60/215...ANYONE...had spent 15 minutes explaining the techincalities of my education to me instead of seeming to brush me off and pointing me to a computer, I might have had a chance to understand what I was and wasn't doing and maybe even survived the UCR experience. There was no help. I tried signing up for a French IV class Spring '05. No block on my file. I hadn't taken an assessment test it turned out. Had anything on the website stated I needed to? Not that I found. Had anyone taken 2 seconds to explain to me when I started in Fall '04 "young man, you need to take these assessments before you can take this class and this class" so that I could've taken them? No. UCR is the school that doesn't care. The students don't give 100%, so why should anybody else there? The only thing that was easy to do there was submit my withdrawl from the university...I was in and out in 30 minutes! Even my final transcripts to send to UCI they didn't get right...I faxed in my request and when I came in they tried to charge me for 2 copies even though I had ordered 1 (my one was one of those straight up-and-down lines, no little curls, no way to mistake it for a "2.") A staff that can't conduct classes in an interesting manner. T.A.'s that are clueless (the one exception to this was a guy who T.A.ed for a History course I took...he actually seemed to give a damn and it was the only course I ever got a solid "A" in my 2 quarters there mainly because he kept the subject matter interesting for me. It's sad when a GE class interests me more than anything in my major...) Students who by and large either don't care, are venomous, or the brief connections you make become obscured either because they stop attending class or because they turn out to be venomous (I had one female "friend" for a couple of months who one day out in the patio near the Campus Center told me to get lost because "there's no way I'm gonna be able to bum a cigarette off any of these frat guys with you around.") Further, the crime rate became atrocious my second and third quarters. Whether it was Road Rage or muggings occurring in broad daylight on or near the very route I walked between my apartment and campus or the cops randomly showing up en masse at the apartment across the street from mine while I tried to take a nap during a 3 hour break in my schedule after studying for a mid-term all night the night before, Riverside left me an inch away from a nervous breakdown and it took me months to really recover from it. I never believed that college could be anywhere near this traumatic, especially not when you're only a half-hour from home and friends and family. But UCR far exceeded my worst expectations. Please, unless you already have a network of friends in place in Riverside, a group of friends who will accompany you to and from campus to avoid the bad guys (luckily I never got mugged or held up, but I was wary of being alone...and I'm a big guy and am not wary of being alone in bad neighborhoods in L.A., so you know it has to have been bad...) and a particular affinity with the City of Riverside for some reason (I'm not sure why most people would, my ex-girlfriend got out and has stayed out ever since! And now so will I...) I DO NOT RECOMMEND THIS CAMPUS TO YOU!!! I was used to being a 3.7-3.8 student at the Community College level while working, volunteering, maintaining an active social life and a dating relationship. I was barely a 3.0 student at UCR and I didn't have any of these activities holding me down (the dating relationship even deteriorated, that's how bad it got.) I just got to a point where I didn't care anymore.

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