About a thousand students will be living on campus this year and today, families helped them unload their possessions and settle in to their new dorms.
Many of the students are moving in from out of the area and so far, they seem impressed with what the campus has to offer.
"He chose this one from all the other ones including Stanford and Berkeley. We think it's a good area even though it's 120 degrees up here. But we really enjoy it. Everyone we've met here is pretty nice," Billie Campbell from San Diego said.
Welcome Week activities begin on Wednesday. The first day of classes at UC Merced is Thursday.
