<p>UC schools are quite impressive. That’s not debated. But would some lower level uc schools like riverside or merced be overshadowed by schools such as the university of hartford or massachusetts at boston? How would one even begin to compare?</p>
<p>My sense of your question is comparing in regard to general academics and (possibly to a lesser extent) the caliber and motivation of the students. So at this level I think that comparisons are very difficult among “second” tier universities. Even US News and World Reports doesn’t shed much light on these kind of comparisons. I would venture a guess that these 4 universities are equal on this score</p>
<p>Beyond that, what is useful to do is to determine the percentage of students who are local – i.e. commuters. That says a great deal about the ambiance of the university. My intuition is that the percentage of commuters at UC Merced is relatively low, and that at UC Riverside it may be a bit higher. But for both these UC the number of commuters would be significantly lower than U Mass Boston and University of Hartford. I doubt that a non-commuter thrives at a commuter school.</p>
<p>There’s of course the ambiance of the locale. Boston is a great college town, and both Merced and Riverside pale in comparison. Hartford is a major city, but (in my opinion) hardly a college town.</p>
<p>In summary if you had to choose between the colleges, and you were not a commuter, then either UC campus is the better choice.</p>