What You'll Actually Pay
Price after grants
$8,123 to $30,546 a year for in-state students, depending on income.
College Scorecard 2024 estimate · in-state rates
See the price at your income ↑Sticker price
Full cost before aid: $38,632 a year in-state. Average need-based aid package: $28,526.Aid and debt
49%
receive need-based grants
$18,162
average debt at graduation
1,209
students got merit aid
about 4% of undergraduates
$9,157
average merit award
Getting In
A note for out-of-state applicants
University of California, Irvine is bound by a California rule capping how much of its undergraduate class can come from outside the state. If you're applying from outside California, you're competing for a limited, separately-capped share of seats — a different picture than the admit rate above shows.
Key dates
Test scores
SAT composite range not reported by this school.
ACT composite range not reported by this school.
What they value
- Very important
- Course rigor (AP/IB)
- GPA
- Personal essay
- Extracurriculars
- Special talent
- Volunteer work
- Work experience
- Important
- Character
- Considered
- First-gen status
- Where you're from
- In-state residency
- Not considered
- Class rank
- SAT/ACT scores
- Recommendations
- Legacy status
- Demonstrated interest
What this means for you
UC Irvine rates three things you can work on as Very Important: course rigor, your essay, and your activities.
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Rigor means AP, IB, and dual enrollment carry real weight — make sure your mix of AP or IB courses is strong. The essay is weighted like your GPA. And depth in a few activities beats a long list.
UC Irvine doesn't consider demonstrated interest in admissions at all — visits and follow-up emails won't move the needle here.
Source: Common Data Set 2025–26, Section C7 (admissions factors)
UC Irvine just showed you what it values in an application. Use that to write a Why-UC Irvine essay that's actually about you — not a template.
Get sourced starting points for your essayStudent Life
47.7% of UC Irvine classes have fewer than 20 students.
47.7%
under 20 students
31.3%
20 to 49
21%
50 or more
Every class section counts, labs and seminars included; first-year courses tend to be larger. UC Irvine CDS 2025–26, I-3.
19:1
student:faculty ratio
Campus life
7.4%
first-years from out of state
47.02%
live on campus
Who attends
- Asian38.4%
- Hispanic25.7%
- White12.7%
- Multiracial6.6%
- Unknown / other2.3%
- Black1.8%
Enrolled undergraduates; international students are counted separately and not included. UC Irvine CDS 2025–26, B2.
Popular majors
Will They Graduate?
74.7% of UC Irvine students graduate in 4 years.
74.7%
finish in 4 years
Entered fall 2019
87%
finish in 6 years
Entered fall 2019
93.4%
return after first year
Finishing late means paying for extra semesters, so the 4-year rate is the one that shows the cost.
Students with Pell Grants
84% finish in 6 years, against 87% of all students.
A 3-point gap: Pell Grant students finish less often than students overall.
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.
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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.
The City
Mid-size city
Irvine, CA
Best For
Notable alumni
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.
Traditions
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 from Irvine
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 and game days
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
Internships and jobs nearby
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
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 79.4% 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.