I was just in the copy room yesterday where the UCLA official acceptance letters/funding offers were being scanned into electronic form. Expect your offers very soon.
You can get a nice room in a house for $350 or lower, you can find a decent apartment for $350-$500, and food is pretty inexpensive too. Cost of living there is extremely low. As long as you don't try to live in the LA area and commute in, you'll be fine.
Look at cost of living, quality of life, relations between faculty-faculty, faculty-students, and students-students. If all things are the same, look at the location you can see yourself living at for the next half of a decade.
What was the school and package? Maybe someone else received the same thing due to it being a baseline or someone received more, meaning you can negotiate successfully.
It depends on who it is. Some have RA money already and some don't. Those with money have more weight at a public school where funding is more precious.
Last year's cohort was 5 and its 4 now. They shoot for 8-9, so TA and RA positions should be easier to secure, plus Merolla and Newman might have brought grant money with them. If you're considering a program near that ranking, UCR will probably offer more opportunities to work with faculty.
Who is your POI?
UCR just hired Dan Biggers, Jen Merolla, and Ben Newman, all well published faculty on the rise. Watch out for that program in the future, it's on the rise.
I'll be declining offers from Illinois (UIUC), UC Davis, USC soon for American Politics waitlisters there. Did anyone get into Michigan as an Americanist and plans to go somewhere else/is leaning somewhere else?