What You'll Actually Pay
Price after grants
$8,852 to $30,393 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: $38,942 a year in-state. Average need-based aid package: $30,420.Aid and debt
63.2%
receive need-based grants
$18,621
average debt at graduation
986
students got merit aid
about 4% of undergraduates
$7,204
average merit award
Getting In
A note for out-of-state applicants
University of California, Riverside 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
- GPA
- Personal essay
- Important
- Course rigor (AP/IB)
- Considered
- Special talent
- First-gen status
- In-state residency
- Not considered
- Class rank
- SAT/ACT scores
- Recommendations
- Extracurriculars
- Character
- Legacy status
- Where you're from
- Volunteer work
- Work experience
- Demonstrated interest
What this means for you
UC Riverside rates your essay as Very Important, and course rigor as Important.
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The essay is weighted like your GPA. AP, IB, and dual-enrollment classes strengthen an application here — a strong mix of them helps.
UC Riverside 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 Riverside just showed you what it values in an application. Use that to write a Why-UC Riverside essay that's actually about you — not a template.
Get sourced starting points for your essayStudent Life
29.1% of UC Riverside classes have fewer than 20 students.
29.1%
under 20 students
39.9%
20 to 49
31%
50 or more
Every class section counts, labs and seminars included; first-year courses tend to be larger. UC Riverside CDS 2025–26, I-3.
22:1
student:faculty ratio
Campus life
1.7%
first-years from out of state
38%
live on campus
2%
of men in fraternities
4%
of women in sororities
Who attends
- Hispanic41.8%
- Asian34.4%
- White9.7%
- Multiracial5.2%
- Black3.9%
- Unknown / other1.5%
Enrolled undergraduates; international students are counted separately and not included. UC Riverside CDS 2025–26, B2.
Popular majors
Will They Graduate?
64.2% of UC Riverside students graduate in 4 years.
64.2%
finish in 4 years
Entered fall 2019
75.5%
finish in 6 years
Entered fall 2019
88%
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
74.7% finish in 6 years, against 75.5% of all students.
Pell Grant students finish at about the same rate as everyone else.
City & Culture
Beyond the data — what it's actually like to spend four years in Riverside.
Riverside is a city of roughly 315,000 in the Inland Empire, about an hour east of downtown Los Angeles and an hour from the coast.
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The campus sits below Box Springs Mountain on the edge of town, with the Carillon bell tower at its centre and a botanic garden climbing the hillside behind it. It is a working Southern California city rather than a beach town or a college town — students commute widely, and the region's logistics and health-care employers are the ones next door.
The City
Mid-size city
Riverside, CA
Best For
Notable alumni
Notable Alumni
Richard R. Schrock
Won the 2005 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing metal catalysts for olefin metathesis, a reaction now used daily to make pharmaceuticals, fuels and synthetic fibres more cleanly. He took his bachelor's degree in chemistry here.
Class of 1967
Billy Collins
Served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003, and is among the most widely read living American poets. He earned both his master's and his doctorate at Riverside.
Class of 1971
Steve Breen
Won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning twice, in 1998 and 2009. He started drawing cartoons for The Highlander, the student paper, while taking a political science degree here.
Class of 1992
Michael Huerta
Ran the Federal Aviation Administration as its Administrator, overseeing US civil aviation and the integration of drones into national airspace.
Class of 1978
Alumni selected for name recognition and range of fields. Not from the Common Data Set.
Traditions
Traditions
The Carillon Bell Tower
The 161-foot tower at the centre of campus holds a 48-bell carillon and is the landmark students orient themselves by — concerts are played from it, and it appears on nearly everything the university prints.
The Highlanders and Scotty the Bear
Riverside runs a Scottish theme it chose deliberately at founding — Highlanders, tartan, and a pipe band — attached, unusually, to a bear mascot named Scotty.
The C on Box Springs Mountain
A large concrete C is set into the hillside above campus, built by students in the 1950s and repainted by them since. Hiking up to it is the standard first-week outing.
Weekend escapes from Riverside
Weekend Escapes
Within driving distance from Riverside
Joshua Tree National Park
About 1 hour 30 minutesThe nearest national park, and the classic desert weekend out of the Inland Empire.
Big Bear Lake
About 1 hour 15 minutesSki runs in winter and a lake in summer, up in the San Bernardino Mountains directly north of campus.
Los Angeles and the Orange County beaches
About 1 hourBoth are roughly an hour in opposite directions, traffic permitting — the reason many students describe Riverside as central rather than remote.
Getting there and game days
Getting There & Game Days
Nearest airport
Ontario International Airport (ONT)
About 25 minutes from campus
For international flights: Los Angeles International (LAX) — about 1 hour 15 minutes by road.
Pro sports nearby
- Ontario Reign AHLAbout 25 minutes away
- Los Angeles Dodgers MLBAbout 1 hour away
- Los Angeles Angels MLBAbout 50 minutes away
- Los Angeles Lakers NBAAbout 1 hour 15 minutes away
Internships and jobs nearby
Career Proximity
The Inland Empire is one of the largest logistics and distribution regions in the country, and Riverside's own economy runs on that plus health care, agriculture research and government.
Top Industries Nearby
Major Employers
- Amazon
- Kaiser Permanente
- Riverside University Health System
- County of Riverside
- Esri
- Bourns
Downtown Los Angeles, about 1 hour west; Ontario's logistics corridor is about 20 minutes
Who thrives here
Who Thrives Here
UC Riverside is test-blind, so no SAT or ACT score is read, and it admits 86.1% of applicants — which makes it one of the genuinely reachable doors into the University of California. What it reads is the transcript: the average high school GPA of enrolled first-years is 3.75, and the application essay is rated Very Important while recommendations, interviews and extracurricular activities are all marked Not Considered. The student body looks like California rather than like a selective university: 41.8% Hispanic, 34.4% Asian, 9.7% white, 3.9% Black, with 96.2% of the entering class from in-state. The number worth pausing on is the one underneath that: 74.7% of Pell-grant recipients graduate within six years against 75.5% of all students, so students who arrive with the least finish at very nearly the same rate as everyone else. The trade-off is scale in the classroom. Teaching runs at 22 students per faculty member, only 29.1% of class sections have fewer than 20 students, and 253 of 1,585 sections carry 100 or more. Aid covers 82.7% of demonstrated need, and graduates who borrow leave owing $18,621.