What's UCI like? directed towards a current student

oceanpartier
Mon, 21 Mar 2011 20:25:51 +0000

It depends on who you are really. Social life isn’t really a heavy focus for me. I did make lots of friends in class though, but we don’t hang out daily. You might, I dunno. You’ll basically be spending most of your time with people from your hall…or your friends from HS if you’re rather attached. If you like partying, then you have to know where to find the parties. Sorry, no advice on that. There’s a lot of clubs. I tried a few but found it hard to commit (I’m not really the most academically stable person). But you can be sure that there’s SOMETHING for you whatever that may be. Also, everything you’ve heard about UCI being a commuter school…it’s true. I myself go home on the weekends and when I actually stayed, it was really empty. Irvine’s not a bad place to live in overall…but I feel spoiled? Nice weather, good food if you have the money, and an expensive place to live. I don’t really wan’t to say this but I guess its lacking culture and that real life adventure sort of thing(?)

The academics are difficult. The quarter system is really rushed and there’s a lot of information packed into a short span of 10 weeks or so. I had it easy my fall quarter. I had 3 classes, out of which, Bio 93, required the most work. There was a lot of memorization but I handled it okay. You basically compete against the other 300 or so people in your lecture. If you rank in the top 17% or so, you got an A. It may sound horrible but you’d be surprised how lazy people get once they go into college. Anyway, got a 3.9 GPA and thought I would soon be breezing through the next 4 years.

However, I was completely caught off guard once winter quarter came along. First of all, I assumed 18 units would be no problem considering my GPA in the fall. Learned to not have an inflated ego. It was borderline nightmarish, an endless cycle of playing catch-up. Its necessary to change your study habits. Procrastination doesn’t work very well anymore. Its not high school. Chem lab at UCI is probably the worst thing ever formulated. The labs are mostly confusing, poorly coordinated with lecture, and time consuming (4 hours). I really had to depend on my TA. Math is also horrid. They have these common finals. If you are taking Math 2A or 2B, take Professor Famiglietti or Lehman. I had both and they are really clear lecturers.

Talk to the TAs whenever you feel like there might be a problem, for all your classes. They are nice and usually have lots of excess time (I feel an incredible need to get all my questions out within 10 minutes when talking to Professors. They have huge lines sometimes). Always go to review sessions especially for Biology courses. Even if you don’t feel like you need it, its a great way to review what is a ton of info and the department tutors are usually very well informed (got a couple of horrid ones for chem class). I guess that’s it for academics.

Class registration at UCI sucks. If you are a freshman who didn’t take like 10 AP classes in high school, you are probably going to be tacked on at the end of the list in terms of priority. My advice would be to plan out your strategy a day or so before your registration opens up. Before you even do that though, take a look at RateMyProf (yeah I know how this sounds) and sort of have an idea of who you want. I know people want to tell you that having a bad teacher shouldn’t be a problem for a good student…and that if you put in enough effort you can still get a A+ blablabla. That may be true, but in my opinion, why torture yourself with the extra burden of having a bad professor? I do have to say though that if you get an instructor who has a crap rating, it’s not the end of the world. I had low rated professors who have turned out to be some of my favorites. So once registration comes, have a list of all the course codes, times, and location on a notecard or somewhere. Make sure everything is a fit. The worst thing in the world is trying to enter classes and having them conflict. Then you have to go back to look at the calendar, and then at locations (to see if you can actually get to classes if they’re clear across campus and you have 5 minutes).

If you can’t get a class, immediately go to plan B and add courses to the waitlist. The worst thing is that the rules of having no conflicting courses also applies to classes on the waitlist…so it sucks. Try to wing it or something. There’s no real strategy at this point I guess… If all else fails, wait a couple of weeks. Fees will come around and careless people will forget to pay (don’t do this yourself btw). They will have all their classes dropped, creating openings for you! Don’t be so content though. They close down the registration system while they’re kicking out all these people and open it up at a set time for everybody. This just happened to me a few days ago. It crashed. Screaming, cursing at the computer…just keep trying. I had to fight to waitlist 2 classes…it said full but I just kept pressing add and it went through eventually. You never know so keep trying. Nothing feels better than stealing a spot from someone else…even if its on a waitlist. God that sounded evil.

Yeah just try to fall into a routine that you find comfortable. Don’t let the pressures get to you too much. They’re just grades, they may be important but not THAT important Sorry if I ranted. I don’t know what your major is so I guess this is just some general advice. To answer the last question, I’m not really loving it but I’m not completely miserable. It’s just something you gotta do. There are fun moments but also tough times. It gets really tiring really fast but its also rewarding too. Don’t stress to much. I was also going to say a few things about the whole “living away from home thing with a roommate” thing and all that…but I guess that’s really for you to explore. lol. I really hope you enjoy college though because its exciting.