As students show up for move-in day at UC Riverside, they are arriving to a campus that –from a housing perspective – is reinvented from the pre-pandemic campus of two Septembers ago. Two residential communities – Dundee Residence Hall and the North District Apartments – are open for students, significantly alleviating the space crunch UC Riverside has faced since its student population began rocketing in the 2000s. UCR has more than doubled its population of 20 years ago, and is projected to have 35,000 students by 2035.

A dive into Washington Monthly’s recent ranking of 393 four-year universities reveals an important success: UC Riverside is the No. 1 university in the nation for Pell Grant performance. The measure considers how many low-income students a university serves compared with statewide earnings. The Pell Grant is the largest federal grant program offered to undergraduates and is typically awarded to students from households earning less than $65,000 per year.