<p>I’m someone who spent his first two years at UCR.</p>
<p>Honestly, UCR gets its reputation as “UC Rejects” because it’s often true. From my experience, most kids that go to UCR were rejected by the “higher ranked” UC schools. This doesn’t make it a bad school. Some kids were just lazy in high school and didn’t get their act together until college. Many kids fail out of UCR their first year because they were not capable. In my opinion, a degree from UCR in a tough field is very respectable. I’ve been through two years of computer science courses there, and can attest to the high difficulty of the classes. Whether or not it’s a school for “UC Rejects”, a lot is still expected from you.</p>
<p>However, UC Rejects is not totally true. I’ve found that a lot of minority students (black students in particular) will choose UCR over higher ranked UCs because of comfort level. I believe UCLA and Berkeley have like 2% black population? UCR’s is between 10-20%. The “UC Rejects” stigma seems most true for white and asian students.</p>
<p>Note: I’m truly not trying to be racist in any way. All the “racial” stuff I listed here I think of as “cultural” and not “racial”.</p>