Why I Chose UCI: Rishabh

Hi! My name is Rishabh and I am an international student from India. I am currently a third year pursuing mechanical engineering at UCI. My hobbies are playing soccer, cooking, and playing FIFA. One fun fact about me is that I can play the bagpipe.

I was admitted as an undeclared student in 2018, but my journey to UCI began in 2017. I remember waking up endless hours studying for the SAT’s and writing my college essays in January 2017. I started hearing back from all the colleges I applied to in March 2018 and UCI was one of the colleges that I got into. After hearing back from the majority of the colleges I applied to, I started doing in depth research about every college that I got into and what each college would offer me as a mechanical engineering student. 

The “California” factor, i.e, the nice weather, closeness to the beaches, variety of cuisines, and more were not the main driving factors in my decision of going to UCI. When I read about the university, I saw that UCI was a research school which meant that it had a lot of opportunities for medical and engineering students to learn beyond the scope of their course and that was exactly what I was looking for as an engineering student. This hands-on experience providing opportunity was the deciding factor for me. These opportunities are provided by the 630 clubs and organizations present at UCI. These organizations are available in academic, environmental, multicultural, political, recreational, religious, service, social, athletic, or Greek fraternities and sororities. This made me realize that I could have hands on experience that I missed during my high school years. 

I was not only looking at my present, i.e, joining different clubs, getting as many hands-on experiences as I could, etc but I was also focusing on my future. I was concentrating on what all companies came to UCI for recruitment purposes. I saw that big companies like Tesla, Boeing, Ford, and Rivian were at the UCI’s Anteater Involvement Fair and recruited students graduating from UCI. Being an international student, spending so much money on education, I wanted to make sure that it was worth every penny. For me, getting a job after graduation meant everything, and looking at those big companies recruiting students from UCI made me believe that UCI was the best fit for me. It was a place where opportunities provided by UCI fit well with what I wanted from my future self.