Whither Merced

The Contra Costa Times reports that enrollment at UC Merced has dropped by 50 percent. Only 3.7 percent of the 12,300 freshman applicants who had been admitted through May told the school they planned to attend in the fall. The percentage is far lower than the 17.2 percent at UC Riverside -- the next-lowest of the nine undergraduate UC campuses. University officials said they're not worried about the enrollment dip because an institution's first few years are always volatile. Many Merced applicants also applied to UC Davis, which had 1,000 more students commit to attending than expected. Some students theorized that the new campus, surrounded by farmland and steadily advancing housing developments, needs to become just a little more fun before it is seen as a destination. "It's hard to settle in a town like this when you come from the Bay Area or Los Angeles," said 21-year-old Nissa Ophaso, a Merced native who transferred to UC Merced last year. "There's so much to do there, and here there are cows."