Can Anyone Tell Me About UC Merced? (San Diego, Fresno: real estate, renting)

[Ghostgecko]

I hope this is in the right area, but I did not know what would have been closer to post in.

I have not been able to find much feedback about UCM online from the students. I know there are about 5,000 of them now.

I am a SMC student in Santa Monica about to transfer. I am thinking of using my TAG for several locations and am just trying to narrow it down a bit and learn some more about the areas.

Can anyone help me? I can't find a single UC Merced student, lol!

A couple of questions might be...

1. Weather?
2. Location, how is it to be that isolated (I'm from Indiana)
3. UC Reputation, is it as strong, I hear that it's growing.
4. Name something you like about the campus
5. Name something you don't like about the campus.
6. Housing looks cheap. What are part time incomes like?

Thanks in advance!

[Majin]

Redneck

[shelato]

Merced is roughly about the same distance to the Sacramento as Bakersfield is to Santa Monica. Just as there isn't a whole lot of local knowledge in Santa Monica about Bakersfield, there isn't a whole lot of local knowledge about Merced in Sacramento. You might have better luck in the greater California forum or maybe an education forum.

[BeauCharles]

Originally Posted by Majin

Redneck

Stereotypical idiocy.

The university is still quite new and its programs and university growth haven't been completely realized yet.

1. The weather has four distinct seasons, but nothing approaching the severity of the Midwest. Hot, dry summers. Mild and beautiful springs and falls. Rainy/foggy winters with occasional frost. Basically a dry Mediterranean climate.
2. Its not that isolated (if you are speaking of Merced). Its a small city of 75,000. Its about 2 hours from the Bay Area or Monterey Peninsula, 1 hour from Fresno, 45 minutes from Modesto, less than 2 hours from Yosemite National Park. The campus is a few miles out of town though.
3. The general reputation of the UC is quite good, but again, UC Merced is a new campus and will take a long time to fully realize its potential and build a reputation.
Can't help with questions 4 and 5 - not a student there.
6. Housing in Merced is probably the cheapest in California. The town really overbuilt during the housing bubble years and when it burst the bottom dropped out of the market. Tons of newer subdivision homes for very reasonable prices.

[Fiddlehead]

I think is would be a decent place to go to school. As BeauCharles says, it is a new, growing campus, so it does not yet have all the amenities of a place like, say, UC Davis.

Also, I think unemployment is still very high there, because of the bust. So, it might not be that easy to find part-time work.

The Campus:

The good is that it is new, pleasing, and well laid-out with expansive views.

The bad is that it seems incomplete (understandably) and exposed (bear in mind I come from Oregon, so I am used to more trees), and a bit out of town.

I am applying to a faculty position there, so doing my research too.

I currently live in a town a lot like Mariposa, so I may end up commuting from there. Kind of a longish drive, and worried a bit about the winter fog though.

Frankly, I like the idea that it is new and growing. Great to be part of bringing something new and valuable to the San Joaquin Valley.

[SacramentoBound]

Originally Posted by Ghostgecko

1. Weather?
2. Location, how is it to be that isolated (I'm from Indiana)
3. UC Reputation, is it as strong, I hear that it's growing.
4. Name something you like about the campus
5. Name something you don't like about the campus.
6. Housing looks cheap. What are part time incomes like?

Thanks in advance!

Before I answer your questions individually, let me say that you almost certainly should not use your TAG at Merced if you can use it anywhere else. This is not because you shouldn't go to Merced, but because UC Merced has around a 90% admit rate. If you are eligible for TAG at another campus (with the exception of UCR), you will be accepted to Merced without TAG.

1. Hot and dry, just like the rest of the valley.

2. Everything is relative, but you will find the UC campus feels a lot more isolated than the town of Merced. The town has restaurants, a theater in the "downtown" area, several cool thrift/antique shops, and a bunch of residential neighborhoods. The campus is a mix of finished and unfinished buildings, with several islands of housing on its outskirts where people thought they would make massive profits renting to students, and not a whole lot in between. As you come into town there are farms and ranches, but closer to campus it seems like there is not much. I would plan to live in town, the commute is only about 7 miles and totally flat; you can bike it no problem in fair weather, or there's a bus. Students who live on campus often complain about how many other students go back to town in the evenings and on weekends, so this is one campus where the social life is a bit reversed in favor of commuters, it seems.

3. There is a huge contingent of people who love to dump on UC Riverside and UC Merced simply because they are the least prestigious of the UC campuses. These people tend to be from California, often they are high school seniors, students at another UC or CSU, or alumni of another UC or CSU. They're very familiar with California's public schools, but not with the rest of the country, where generally speaking people don't care about the difference between Irvine and Riverside, or between Davis and Merced. Ask the average Joe on the east coast about what public schools there are in California and they are likely to say, "UCLA, UC Berkeley, and I don't know the rest of them." That's if they even know Berkeley is a public school—sometimes people on the east coast assume it's private because all they know is that it's a school for computer geniuses.

The University of California is probably the very best system of state-run universities in this country. So even if UCR and UCM are the "worst" of this system, that does not make them bad schools. Their biggest problem is an image problem, and a student body problem that comes from that image problem. A lot of very bright high school seniors and even CCC transfer students would never apply to these campuses because their very narrow perspective leads them to believe they are "bad" schools. And this turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy because the students who have had the most success tend to set their sights on UCLA and Cal (plus private schools), with their public "coin flips" and safeties being campuses like San Diego, Irvine, Davis, Santa Barbara. Merced doesn't have to be a terrible school to be less attractive than 6 of the top 20 public campuses in the nation.

Long story short: Among the UCs, its reputation is poor. Among all public campuses in California, it's still probably more respected than any CSU except for CalPoly SLO, because the UC system is designed to serve the top 12.5% (ish?) of students in the state. In the nation as a whole, it's a UC but not LA or Cal, which means it will be generally fairly regarded. Keep in mind its strengths right now are ag/tech. In the future, as it gets more graduate schools running and campus more developed, its reputation might skyrocket. No way to know.

4. I like that their facilities are state-of-the-art. Every lab and lecture hall is brand new. I like that the professors at Merced came from all the other UCs and are experienced teaching to the standard of the University of California. I like that you're only about 90 minutes away from Yellowstone. I like that the student body is still relatively small, which probably means less competition for undergraduate research.

5. I don't like how much of the campus is still being built. I don't like the economic situation in Merced, even though real estate is super cheap. I don't like the heat in the valley (but I have to deal with it here in Sac anyway).

6. Probably the same as part-time incomes for college students everywhere. Mostly minimum wage. It might be really hard to find work off-campus because of how bad the local job market is. On the plus side, if you have the grades to get into a more prestigious UC, Merced might offer you a little more financial aid than the other campus, to try to "steal" you away. But probably not a lot more.

[fresnofresno]

If your from Indiana it is not isolated at all. Everyone who says it is most likely comes from metro's where it's just suburb after suburb. 100 mile radius around Merced there are probably 3-4 million people. San Jo,Fresno,Modesto,Stockton,Yosemite,Salinas,the delta are all within 2 hour drive, some closer.