Crunchy Cookie
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| Posted: Sun Jun 05, 2005 1:33 am
Post subject: Don't go to UC Riverside |
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This one's for all you California teenagers out there.
(Copied from my post at http://www.studentsreview.com/CA/UCRV.html)
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Since it's May already, I'm rushing as fast as I can to finish this review
in time for those of you in the entering class of 2004. If, by the tone of
urgency, you sensed that this is more likely a warning than a musing of
enthusiastic worship, then you're probably intellectually overqualified to
go to UCR.
I remember a 1999 New York Times article in which the journalist asked the
million-dollar question, "So how bad is it to go to Riverside?" He didn't
provide as definitive of an answer as I'd have liked, but then, he was never
personally subjected to the horrors of spending 3.5 years (I escaped as fast
as I could) here. The short answer is: listen to the science majors, not the
humanities majors, who have spoken before me further down this page. This
"college" is everything they said, and less.
If you're browsing this site at all, it's probably because you're the type
to give thought to your future and education. In that respect, you're a huge
step ahead of most of your would-be classmates. Most rational people go to
college for at least one of two main reasons: for the benefit of the school's
reputation, and to learn something. Regarding the first reason, it goes
without saying that the reputation attached to a UCR degree is a joke - one
that you become the butt of as an alumnus. As for the other reason, if you
expect to learn anything of value, keep your expectations at the same level,
because reputation and educational quality have a greater correlation than
you may know.
Starting off, UCR makes a fairly good first-year impression. Classes may be
dumb, but since they're basically high school nonsense all over again
(English, basic math, history, etc.) you don't really mind. The endless
succession of As boosts the ego and decorates the report card quite nicely.
But by the time you hit the halfway point of your education (which is about
three years for most morons at this campus), you start to look back at
first-year college like the first month of a relationship: everything was
fun mainly because it was new, and because you were having fun being away
from home. Eventually you catch on that the As come a little TOO easily (the
feeling of reward declines accordingly), and once you run out of GE courses
to BS your way through, the level of interesting subject matter may come to
a screeching halt, depending on your major.
Before I go on, I should mention that I'm mainly speaking for non-technical
majors. Like 20% of the student body, my major was Business Administration,
whatever the hell that means. I can't comment too much on the math/science
stuff, but from those I've talked to, our opinions don't differ all that
much. UCR's first educational flaw is how every class is dumbed down to the
lowest common denominator, straight at the very bottom of the IQ barrel. A
great portion of entering freshman start out in remedial, 8th-grade English
and pre-pre-calculus math (i.e. algebra). It should come as no surprise that
UCR has the highest failure rate on the UC Subject A exam, which sets a very
reasonable (in my opinion) minimum standard of writing proficiency. Not only
has Riverside always had, by a wide margin, the lowest admissions standards
among any UC, but it has only declined further. When I walked onto campus in
fall 1998, the average SAT was 1105. Two years later, it dropped to 1060
(very close to the national average) and recently it bottomed out
(hopefully) at 1057. Classes are structured accordingly.
You could argue that it's harsh and unfair to criticize people for the way
they are, and to criticize a school for simply catering to the abilities of
its student body. Maybe it is, but a few things take the guilt out of this.
The first might be described as false advertising. With a statistic like
"only the top 12.5% can go to UC!" thrown around, your expectations stay
pretty high. A natural reaction is to think "Hmm, the top one-eighth? It
couldn't be that bad!" Big mistake. Another is that the mostly Southern
California-sourced students are so shallow, materialistic, and
work-ethic-free that it feels more like mocking sit-com characters than
actual humans. Come to think of it, this is less a criticism of how people
are and more of how they act, which is fair game.
In any case, it feels perfectly fair to expose the NATURE of the education
for the sham it is, which is the greater problem anyway. Once you spend
enough time here, you start to realize how utterly fake the classes are. It
took me a while to catch on because I figured only the GE classes were like
that, which proved to be naïve of me. Don't expect to learn anything useful
at UCR. Few professors try. The most typical class goes as follows: you pay
for a $100 textbook (that the UCR bookstore later offers to buy back for
$15) that's full of useless crap. The homework consists of reading this
useless crap. The lectures consist of the professor reading out loud the
book-sourced overhead slides which are an exact repetition of the useless
crap you read the night before. Finally, the also-book-sourced
multiple-choice tests (the scantron forms for which you have to go and buy
yourself) test you on how well you have memorized all the aforementioned
useless crap over the course of ten weeks.
Useless crap? Useless crap? "Elaborate!" you cry. Fine. Please tell me what
can be gained by memorizing a fact like "the 4 Ps of marketing," which are
Price, Place, Product, and Promotion. You may be asked a True/False question
on whether or not those are indeed the 4 Ps of marketing. You may be asked
to fill in the blanks of the 4 Ps of marketing. You may be given a list of
five Ps of marketing and asked to identify which of the five Ps does not
belong. The point being, WHO GIVES A MOTHERFUCKING SON OF A CRAP? Not only
are you learning, and being tested on, nothing but KNOWLEDGE (as opposed to
ideas or insights), but the knowledge is of the most useless kind: simple
common sense wrapped in new terminology. You do realize you're paying
$40,000 and sacrificing four of the best years of your life to listen to
professors READ TO YOU THE INCONSEQUENTIAL FLUFF IN A BOOK THEY MAKE YOU
READ ANYWAY, don't you?
That may be the most typical example of a UCR class, but far from the worst.
Anyone who goes through the Business program at UCR is required to take a
course called Computer Science 8. The first day consists of the professor
telling you what a keyboard and mouse are. (If you find that confusing, don't
worry, he draws a diagram of each.) The rest of the quarter is a test of
Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Pathetic enough? Apparently not.
Their methods of teaching you these programs are 90-minute narrative
lectures (taught by chalkboard, not computer) telling you exactly which menu
to click on to find this command, or what key combination is the shortcut
for that command (i.e. Ctrl-X to Cut, Ctrl-V to Paste), etc. Oh, and every
week, there are THREE-HOUR "labs" that have you cutting, pasting, etc., all
in the name of practice, of course. Basically, the objective of the course
is to memorize the instruction manual for three intuitive programs most of
us already know, and the curriculum really goes to great lengths to invent
new ways of being revolting here. The quarter I took CS8, we had this
crooked professor (Hovel Babikian) who basically rewrote Microsoft's manuals
in his own wording, published his own books, made us pay about $150 for
them, and designed them so they were non-resalable. They eventually got rid
of the guy, but our wallets were left high and dry, and we had no legal
recourse.
In the business program, classes only get worse as you ascend (descend?)
farther into upper-division. If you were hoping to get a good idea of what
"Business Administration" means by your third year, don't get your hopes up.
The introductory business course (BSAD 10) is structured exactly like the
marketing class I illustrated: testing of your ability to memorize a
textbook full of trivialities. The majority of business courses put most
people to sleep. It's not just me; most business students hated most classes
and/or most professors, whether you're talking accounting, finance, MIS,
logistics, etc. There is one upside, however: because most classes are
curved and most of your competition is brain-dead, you can coast through any
class, earn straight D-level grades (i.e. 65%), and walk out with a B+ after
the curve.
If you remember high school economics, you'll look back on it as a MENSA
class after witnessing what's in store here. The homework and exam problems
in the microecon course I took came down to a combination of arithmetic and
8th grade algebra. It wasn't uncommon for the professor to start out a
lecture by drawing two parallel lines on a graph, then asking the class,
"who can tell me which line represents the greater quantity?" Are you
getting the drift of how fucking insulting every day at this school can be?
This wasn't an introductory course; this was UPPER DIVISION.
And in upper division, things don't get harder by a bit. The only emerging
challenge is paying attention to such increasingly dull subject matter as
the years go by. It can also get exploitative. UCR is more than happy to
co-sponsor programs by corporate America that abuse students for free labor.
Ask me about my experience with the General Motors Marketing Internship
sometime; I could write a paper as long as this one about how outrageously
fake that was. It comes around every two years, and you have now been
warned. Sometime around third year, you soon start to miss all those silly
humanities classes you took freshman year. At least those were fun.
Other education-related complaints: professors are apathetic. Not many TAs
in the business program are English-proficient (at best, half) - a disease
that seems to be spreading to the professors. And speaking of different
backgrounds, there's a fair share of immigrant professors from Asian
countries (especially India) here. If you're Asian like I am, you know what
that means: asshole professors who are as stingy with grades as possible,
yell at you like some kid to be condescended to, and have a frequent habit
of assigning you a lower grade than is deserved or is mathematically
justified, since they feel they need no justification.
One of the most overlooked and screwed-up aspects of the education at UC
Riverside is the next natural topic of discussion: the students. If you want
to enrich your mind, being surrounded by dumbasses isn't exactly conducive
to that end. No one at Riverside has any aspiration in life besides "making
bank" (as they say in SoCal), and few have the talent to achieve even that.
This is an extremely unmotivated student body. The freshman dropout rate is
an astounding 16% - highest among the UCs despite having the lowest entrance
requirements. Of the 40 people on my dorm hall, I remember at least 8
failing to return for sophomore year (and a few more failed down the line),
mostly because they never went to any classes. And don't think you won't
have to deal with these film-flams, because you will, if only as class
partners. Remember those high school projects where you got assigned 5 to a
project and there was always one free-rider? UCR is just like that, except
that in a 5-person group, the free-rider count always tallies 3 or 4. I
spent EVERY project of my college career doing ALL the work on my own,
either because no one else felt like doing anything or they were too dumb to
contribute. Sure, everyone else gets credit for your As, but it's the lesser
of two losses. You'd better get used to this if you want to keep your GPA
out of the toilet. For a final tidbit about student intelligence, I'll just
mention that almost everyone here belongs to some religion, and let you
interpret the implications on your own.
My guess is that if you can score above 1200 on the SAT or above 130 on an
IQ test, you'll end up feeling the same way I do. I say this as a 1200 SATer
(a distinctly average score among the college-bound) with a 140ish IQ who
breezed through UCR with a 3.6 GPA without lifting a finger. I know there
are plenty of you out there smarter than I am, so if someone like me finds
this much to abhor about UCR, how satisfied could you possibly be?
It's very hard to relate to most people here on any deep level, probably
because not much lies beneath the surface. Meaningful conversation is in
depressingly short supply. Personally, my greatest interest is cars, and I
get excited when I meet someone else who's into them. Inevitably, though,
90% of the people I meet are only interested in discussing what size, brand,
and style of "rims" with which to pimp out their dorky-ugly Honda Civic.
Everyone is obsessed with nothing but image and appearance here. Every girl
spends every dime on looking as trendy as possible (the result being they
all look the same); every guy blows his bucks on making his slow, pathetic
rice rocket APPEAR fast (instead of going fast, or buying a real car for the
same money). Most discussions between students eventually de-evolve to
parties, cars, clothes, muscles, hair, etc. A fair share of non-black
students speak unconvincing Ebonics, despite years of practice. Dorm
dwellers spend endless hours standing in the middle of the hall to gaze at
themselves through those full-length mirrors. Speaking from experience, any
girlfriend you find here will likely have two concerns: her looks, and how
good you make her look as her accessory. Culture-wise, UCR is UCLA, minus
the brain.
There's one class required by all students that does an excellent job of
revealing some of the most depressing truths about them and the school:
Ethnic Studies 1. First, a little background info. In those college guide
reviews, you may have heard politically-correct people (of questionable
honesty) praising UCR for having such great diversity. But let's be honest:
the evolution of race relations over the past century is mostly limited to a
decrease in the rate of killing one another. As of this decade, an increase
in diversity on campus just means an increase in the number of clannish
groups that never talk to one another. Do a deep enough level of research
and you'll find that this pattern is universal across all colleges. Even
California's.
The embarrassment specific to UCR, though, are the ideas that come out of
people's mouths when subjects like race arise. Let's go back to that class,
ETST 1. From the faculty end, this sorry setup is structured like another
boring, memorization-based history class. If the staff hasn't changed, you'll
end up with one of two teachers for ETST 1: a geeky, FOBish Asian guy
(Chang) or a geeky, aging, out-of-touch white woman (Bonacich). When they're
not putting you to sleep with lame lectures, the rest of the class is
dedicated to open student discussion, if you can call it that.
"Discussion" ends up being as much of a euphemism as "diversity." Almost
every minute of discussion was basically a battleground for uneducated,
small-minded whites to argue with uneducated, small-minded blacks. (This
takes place, by the way, at a school whose two largest ethnicities are Asian
and Hispanic.) This is the kind of school where black students feel the need
to shout into the microphone "CAPITALISM IS WRONG!" or "whites are the only
race capable of racism." This goes on for about ten weeks, and it's hard to
know whether to laugh or cry. The real action begins when it's time for the
student panels, comprised of members of each ethnicity giving their two
cents (clearly an overvaluation) about race opinions.
Want to know what happened in my class? The blacks went first. Their thesis:
everything is whitey's fault. The Hispanics' presentation was perfectly
sane, but then the Asians made theirs, which consisted of a bunch of
air-headed girls dressed up in kimonos whining about things like "everyone
thinks we're smart, and drive nice cars!" and showing a video of them
shoving a camera in random people's faces to ask "what do you think about
Asian-Americans?!?" This video, by the way, included a TOUR OF CHINATOWN.
Priceless. The whites, who went last, basically tried to convince the class
that racism is something that died a generation ago and doesn't exist
anymore. The ironic thing about a class like this is that it made me want to
lynch EVERYONE OF EVERY RACE for the exact same reason. I guess you could
say, then, that it promoted equality.
Outside of class, the students continue to typify the worst behaviors of
each group. Whites act as if all non-whites are invading their rightful
property by their very presence at UCR. Blacks feel entitled to say anything
to anyone. Asians and Hispanics seem to behave a little less arrogantly on
average, though maybe I'm wrong. Mostly, everyone's simply clannish, but it's
interesting to note that I can verify a comment I had read before:
minorities of different races associate somewhat more often than minorities
and whites. Whether this is due to whites thinking they're better than
anyone else, or due to a joint minority conspiracy, is beyond me. This is
also the kind of school where you can hear people talk about gays with "oh,
I just can't believe people do that!" (insert facial expression of amused,
disgusted condescension) and hear loving Christians toss around "fag" like a
natural part of their lexicon. The bottom line is that anytime people open
their mouths on race, religion, or sexual preferences, any tolerant person
would want to punch them in the face. Four types of people I can't stand are
bigots, idiots, fakes, and Christians (pardon the redundancy), and around
here, you can't throw a rock without hitting one.
If there's a connecting theme to the UCR experience (one I hope I've
conveyed by now), it's that mediocrity tends to have a domino effect. As
this unfunny joke of a college experience comes to a relieving conclusion,
you will face the mediocrity one last time at the career center. I spoke
with not one, not two, but three different career counselors. One of them
simply tried to get me the hell out of her office ASAP after giving me
emotionless replies. The second, when I was asking for career advice, was
friendly, but knew little about the careers I was asking about (i.e. really
enigmatic, obscure endeavors like. journalism) and seemed to be making
things up as the conversation went along. The third, when I was asking for
resume advice, gave me such pointers as "you have to put your name in BOLD!"
and "indent these lines!" He made these suggestions with the utmost
confidence, as if he was blinding me with his insight. Well, Orlando, you
blinded me with something, but it wasn't insight.
Likewise, shit schools apparently attract shit companies. Go attend a UCR
career fair and count on your fingers the number of companies whose names
you recognize. Chances are, you can leave your hand at home. Part of the
problem, I'm sure, is that UCR mostly works with companies in the
surrounding area, but the county of Riverside has few opportunities for the
college-educated. In fact, it's not exactly exploding with opportunity for
anyone at the moment. It's well-known that a great portion of Riverside
county residents commutes to Orange and San Diego counties for work. If you
don't believe me, do some regional research, or check out the eastbound 91
freeway at rush hour (or westbound in the morning). Once you start talking
about jobs more than half an hour away, any rational company would rather
take a pick among the more desirable pool of UCLA (or even UCI) candidates.
Riverside really isn't the best location for setting up a home base from
which to launch a career. That could be why 90% of UCR graduates leave the
county upon graduation - a statistic the school would no doubt rather keep
secret.
So there's nothing to learn, nothing to do, and no one worth talking to. So
let's explore the superficial subject matter. The dorms were crap when I was
there (98-99), but I hear they're fine now that they're all Internet-ready,
the parking lot was revamped, and a third dorm was built. But they are very
cramped for slots, so there's a high chance you'll be squeezed into a
triple-occupant room. If the food's still the same, don't expect much in the
way of edibility. This was the consensus opinion. The eggs are fake, which
isn't surprising since the batter looks like a huge tub of snot. The bacon
ain't real bacon, it's turkey bacon. All the meats taste like crap, and you'll
be tasting each one more than once, literally. Typical scenario on Monday:
fried chicken! Yum. Take the leftovers, sprinkle some herbs on them, call it
Tuesday Herb Chicken! Chop it up and soak it and it becomes Wednesday
chicken soup! Get the idea? Those of you who, in spite of my advice, already
signed up and are on schedule to take the overnight visit this summer, are
in for treat: two straight days of fulfilling, tasty meals. Clever
marketing, eh? Bait-and-switch. Don't get too used to it.
Opinions differ about the campus, but I like it well enough. It's
modern-looking, and you can walk across one end to the other in ten minutes.
It's basically the size of your high school, squared. If you live close by,
a car is unnecessary. But if you wander more than about 500 feet from
campus, prepare your senses for some serious eyesores. Really, the Inland
Empire (defined as Riverside and San Bernardino Counties) is a dead, hideous
wasteland, and the first sign of civilization is a half-hour away. 30
minutes southwest on the 91 freeway crosses you into Orange County; 30
minutes west on 60 gets you into LA county. There are few sights more
disgusting than the city (or county) of Riverside. Everything is run down,
dirty, and according to statistics, dangerous. Come on down if you want to
get raped! Both a girl AND a guy got raped during my years of student life -
the girl, in UCR's own library. The city of Riverside is, as so accurately
captured by a former reviewer, "a metropolis of trailer parks and fast food
joints." The distinct smell of cow dung (from neighboring cities like Norco)
permeates the atmosphere about twice a week on average. The weather in
spring and summer quarters (April through September) is hell. Expect half
the days in spring quarter to be in the 90-degree range; it's extremely
uncomfortable. The smog during those same months will have you reevaluating
old beliefs such as "the sky is blue," and studies have shown that children
who grew up in Mira Loma (a western province of the city of Riverside) in
recent years have reduced lung capacity.
If you've heard of rumors about cheap rent from 2000-or-earlier alumni, that
information is outdated. Because of UCR's UCLA-wannabe mentality, they've
been absorbing an additional 1,000 students every year since the late 90s,
with no end in sight and without building a corresponding amount of housing.
Back in 2000, my tiny (250 SqFt), kitchenless, run-down campus apartment (at
UCR-owned Bannockburn) cost $325. What is it now? $618. Meaning $2.47 per
square foot. Meaning it's more expensive than many apartments in
infinitely-nicer Orange County. I'd like to say you get what you pay for,
but considering the quality of the apartments and the surrounding area, that's
wishful thinking. Expect to face this problem shortly after arrival, because
you will be kicked out of the dorms after freshman year due to lack of
space.
If you've been waiting for an upside to this portrait of objectivity, sorry
for making you wait so long to tell you this: there is none. Seriously,
none. I can't think of one reason to go to UCR at all. The education sucks,
the professors suck, the people suck, the area sucks, and considering a
Berkeley education costs the same amount, it's a poor value. (Quick tidbit:
a Berkeley business grad's starting salary is about $48,000; a UCR business
grad's is $33,000.) All you're left with in the end is several thousands in
student debt, and with the second-rate job you'll probably end up with (due
to your shameful degree) it will probably take you years to pay it back. If
you didn't get into one of the top 4 UCs (Berkeley, LA, San Diego, or Davis)
I advise attending a community college and transferring in. Two enormous
benefits exist for going to a CC: you save about $20,000 over two years, and
your likelihood of transferring into a REAL UC is greatly increased, because
CC transfers have much higher priority than inter-UC transfers. There's no
need to stain your resume for life with a marking like "RIVERSIDE" just so
you can tell your quickly-forgotten high school peers that you got into some
college.
Do yourself a favor: think long-term. The "R" in UCR is known to stand for
rejects, or retards, for a reason.
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