I have friends in Irvine who live pretty close to UCI and I visit them relatively often. To me, Irvine is a pretty generic upper middle class suburb, not too dissimilar to most of Northern VA or Montgomery County, MD or Northern NJ, Long Island or Southern Connecticut. I’m sure there’s other similar suburbs that I’m not as familiar with, maybe the collar counties around Chicago or areas around Houston, Dallas, Atlanta.
Just my long winded way of saying a kid transferring from George Mason to UVa might have the same reaction as a kid transferring from UCI.
I think if you go north/east from UCI, sure. But south/West of the campus is a really nice area with a significant amount of wealth. Sure some is still “suburban” but it’s pretty dense and actually has pockets of walkability.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not for everyone. But my MIL moved from Newport Beach probably a 3 minute drive from campus to Malibu a few years ago. When I’d see her in Newport Beach, it was immediately clear why it was a very nice place to live. When I visited Malibu, I wonder why the hell would anyone want to live here.
It was probably more just about there are very few trees in California versus East Coast. It was the first thing I noticed when we flew into North Carolina as well.
Last year one of my nephews was looking nationwide at undergrad film schools and UCI was on his longish CA list. I have a friend in the industry and asked her about the schools on his list. Turns out her husband teaches part-time at UCI. She discouraged my nephew from applying because she said UCI is mostly a commuter school with none of the on-campus experience so important for freshman year.
I researched birthdays for these guys about a month ago and, IIRC, by February, our roster will have 2x24 yr olds +2 x23 yr olds. Ugonna entered college young and will “only” be 21.
I grew up in northern California (Sacramento) and went to Maine for undergrad. The sheer number of trees was genuinely disorienting, and when the leaves changed in the fall it absolutely blew my mind.
My first year at UVA, a friend who grew up in Florida turned to me and asked why all the trees were dying. I told him it’s just Fall. He felt dumb for asking but he had never experienced it before.