I've been talking pretty closely with a faculty member there and I felt like he was very interested in me going to UCI. I also went to the visitor day and had really good discussions with a few of the faculty. They explained that they guarantee funding for 5 years so they try to make sure you have an advisor committed to funding you but it still seems very strange that they haven't accepted/rejected a single person for the program yet. We're just 3 weeks away from making final decisions and it just seems strange that nobody has heard back.