<p>My sister went to troy high school and was in their magnet program and decided to attend UCR. I’m sure she could have gotten into other school’s because the magnet program at troy is well known. Anyway she majored in neuroscience at UCR and is in med school in the caribbeans. She got rejected from every med school here and she had a decent gpa and mcat score, they wanted her to get her masters… would this have been the same if she attended another UC? I’m not sure, but I suspect it.</p>
<p>My ex went to UCR, I’ve been to campus and sat in on classes. The campus is fairly nice, and they are building new things all the time. Once you step out of campus though, you are faced with run down apartment complexes, bums, people aimlessly walking around (gangsters?), and no real college town besides a sprinkle of eateries right next to campus. Dorms are fairly nice, but the apartments surrounding the campus are pretty old and not fun to live in. I have many friends from high school that go to UCR (I live 20 mins away), they are not disadvantaged at all as we live in a well off community (median household income is 100k+). I talked to them regarding their decision to go to UCR and their responses where either, UCR was the only school they got into and their parents are forcing them to go to a UC, or that they do not want to go to a CC because they want to get out of their parent house and dorm and experience the so called ‘college experience’.</p>
<p>Like my friends, I messed up in high school (gpa sub 3.0), even though I took all honors and AP courses, I could have gone to UCR, but since my sister went there, I opted out for a higher ranked UC. UCR is good in some majors, but if you are going into a field where college recognition plays a big factor ie: USC, UCLA etc business, then you might want to chose a different avenue. I forgot the average starting salary of UCR graduates vs other UC’s, but it was significantly lower. My brother attended cal poly SLO, graduated cum laude in computer engineering? And was making 90k out of college, after a year or so he was making over 6 figures. Point being, he was a motivated guy and I believe that it doesn’t really matter what school you go to, but what you do their and how well you prepare for your major. I’m sure he was making more than most graduates from other UC’s even though he went to a cal state. I admit I am a little biased towards UCR, as I opted out for CC so I could go somewhere else, as well as the fact that my ex goes their and traveling 30 miles in traffic to see her often was a b*tch, but i cant stress the fact enough that college is what you make of it. But yeah there is my story, take it as a grain of salt.</p>