At a Glance
UC Irvine admits 28.9% of applicants.
What You'll Actually Pay
See what families at different income levels actually pay after aid.
What families actually pay, by income level
After grants and scholarships. Before loans. Public school prices shown at in-state rates.
Source: College Scorecard / IPEDS, 2024-25
Where the Sticker Price Goes
Based on average need-based grant. Actual cost varies by family income — see chart above.
Shown at in-state rates.
Debt at Graduation
49%
receive need-based grant aid
$18,162
average debt at graduation
UC Irvine graduates carry an average of $18,162 in debt.
Merit Aid
1,209
students received merit aid
$9,157
average merit award
Getting In
UC Irvine admits 28.9% of applicants.
This school reports SAT section scores but leaves the composite range blank, so there is no mid-50% band to chart.
ACT composite range not reported by this school.
What They Value
Academic
Nonacademic
University of California, Irvine rates your personal essay as Very Important — equal weight to your GPA. Don't underestimate it. Demonstrated interest is Not Considered here — campus visits and emails to admissions won't affect your odds.
Student Life
47.7% of UC Irvine classes have fewer than 20 students.
Share of undergraduate class sections at each size, from CDS Section I-3. More red = more large lectures.
At UC Irvine, 47.7% of your classes will have fewer than 20 students.
Class size data reflects all undergraduate sections including labs, seminars, and lectures. Large research universities often have smaller upper-division and graduate-level sections that improve the overall distribution. First and second-year students typically experience larger classes than these averages suggest.
Source: Common Data Set 2025–26, Section I-3 (class sizes)
19:1
student:faculty ratio
Campus Life
From out of state (freshman class)
7.4%
Live on campus
47.02%
Who Attends
Racial and ethnic breakdown of enrolled undergraduates, as reported in each school's Common Data Set. "Unknown / Other" includes students who did not report or selected "other."
UC Irvine's student body is 12.7% white.
Popular Majors
Will They Graduate?
UC Irvine graduates 74.7% of students in 4 years.
Graduating late means paying for extra semesters. The 6-year rate tells you who eventually finishes — the 4-year rate tells you what it actually costs.
UC Irvine graduates 74.7% of students in 4 years.
What finishing late actually costs
Based on each school's published cost of attendance. Public school costs shown at in-state rates.
UC Irvine
74.7%
4-yr grad rate
Extra year cost: $38,632*
* In-state cost of attendance. Out-of-state students pay significantly more.
Graduation rate data from Common Data Set 2025–26, Fall 2018 cohort (most recent available). 4-year rate = students completing in 4 years or less. 6-year rate = students completing within 6 years.
87%
Overall 6-yr rate
84%
Pell recipient rate
There's a 3 point gap between overall and Pell Grant graduation rates. Worth asking the school about support resources.
Freshman Retention
93.4%
93.4% of first-year students return for sophomore year.
City & Culture
Beyond the data — what it's actually like to spend four years in Irvine.
Irvine is a master-planned Orange County city built in villages around parks and arterial roads, and the campus mirrors it: a ring road drawn around a 16-acre park at the centre, with each academic discipline on its own plaza. It is quiet, green and suburban rather than urban — there is no historic downtown to spill into — so the trade is convenience and calm for street life. What sits nearby is the point: the Newport and Laguna beaches are about fifteen minutes south, Disneyland and Anaheim about twenty-five minutes north, and Los Angeles an hour up the freeway when traffic allows. Orange County rents are high, which is the real cost pressure on a student living off campus.
Notable Alumni
Greg Louganis
Swept the springboard and platform diving golds at the 1984 and 1988 Olympics, the only man to do it in consecutive Games. He dove for the Anteaters and graduated in 1983 with a degree in drama.
Class of 1983
Michael Chabon
Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist. He wrote The Mysteries of Pittsburgh as his MFA thesis in the creative writing program here and sold it in 1987 for a record sum for a first novel, which put the programme on the national map.
Class of 1987
Jon Lovitz
Saturday Night Live cast member through the late 1980s and a fixture in film comedy afterwards. He earned a bachelor's degree in drama here in 1979.
Class of 1979
Alumni selected for name recognition and range of fields. Not from the Common Data Set.
The City
Mid-size city
Irvine, CA
Best For
Traditions
Zot! and Peter the Anteater
The anteater has been the mascot since students voted one in during the campus's first years, and "Zot!" — the sound of the tongue in the old B.C. comic strip — is the cheer, thrown with a two-fingered anteater hand sign at every game.
Wayzgoose
The oldest tradition on campus, started by the student association in 1972 — a spring medieval-themed festival of guilds, food and performances held across Aldrich Park.
Ring Road and Aldrich Park
The campus is a circle drawn around a 16-acre park, so nearly everyone walks the same loop every day and student groups table along it — the closest thing Irvine has to a main street.
UCI Esports
UCI opened the first public-university esports programme in the country in 2016, with a 3,500-square-foot arena of gaming PCs and a broadcast setup on campus.
Weekend Escapes
Within driving distance from Irvine
Newport Beach and Laguna Beach
About 15-20 minutesThe nearest coastline, close enough to be an ordinary afternoon rather than a trip.
Anaheim and Disneyland
About 25 minutesTheme parks, the Honda Center and Angel Stadium, all within a short drive north.
Los Angeles
About 1 hour without trafficMuseums, music and professional sport, reachable by car or on Metrolink from Irvine station.
San Diego
About 1.5 hoursBeaches and a second city to the south, and an easy Amtrak run down the coast.
Getting There & Game Days
Nearest airport
John Wayne Airport (SNA)
About 15 minutes from campus
For international flights: Los Angeles International (LAX) — about 1 hour.
Pro sports nearby
- Anaheim Ducks NHL
- Los Angeles Angels MLB
- Los Angeles Chargers NFL
Career Proximity
Irvine is an employment centre in its own right rather than a commuter suburb — medical devices, semiconductors, gaming and consumer brands all have headquarters or major sites within a few miles of campus, with Los Angeles an hour north for everything else.
Top Industries Nearby
Major Employers
- Edwards Lifesciences
- Broadcom
- Blizzard Entertainment
- Masimo
- UCI Health
The Irvine Spectrum and Irvine Business Complex — both within about 10 minutes of campus
Who Thrives Here
Irvine admits 28.9%, and like every UC campus it does not read SAT or ACT scores — the file is coursework, GPA, essays and what a student has actually done. The academic weight sits in social sciences (16.58% of degrees conferred), biological sciences (11.63%), psychology (11.62%) and computer science (10.81%), so the place runs heavily pre-health and pre-tech rather than broad liberal arts. Outcomes are strong and the finishing rate is the number a family should price: 87.0% graduate within six years but 74.7% within four, so a fifth year is common enough to plan for, and 93.4% come back for a second year. Aid covers 85.9% of need rather than all of it, and graduates who borrow leave owing $18,162. The teaching scale is better than the headcount suggests — 47.7% of sections have fewer than 20 students against 19 students per faculty member. The student body is the most distinctive thing about the campus: 38.4% Asian, 25.7% Hispanic and 12.7% white, with 16.8% of the entering class arriving from outside the US, and 47.0% of undergraduates live in university housing, which is what keeps a suburban Orange County campus from emptying out at night.