University of California-Los Angeles Top Questions

Because the university was so large, it was difficult to have an intimate classroom setting and have the opportunity to get to know the professors.

UCLA can feel impersonal at times. Due to its large student population, it was at first difficult to feel like a part of the UCLA community. Also, finding out information about events at the school is a somewhat difficult process.

The worst thing is that the student population is large, so sometimes it feels a bit crowded in the dining halls or in the library.

I honestly couldn't name a bad thing about this college. Some people don't like the large class sizes (many are upwards of 200 students), but I think that offers students a chance to meet more people and be exposed to more ideas from their classmates. Some would also complain that the counselors aren't extremely helpful at this public school, however to that I would say that it forces you to be proactive. The counselors don't hold your hand, so you have to take your education and future into your own hands, which can be rewarding.

My classmates, who are predominantly white and Asian and the rest are from different parts of the U.S. or World, provide a variety of perspectives and ideas.

So many stairs and hills.

UCLA seems to expect its students to fall into the mob mentality when it comes to school spirit and many students, myself included, are only happy to comply. Rather than self inspecting and identifying the aspects of the university that the Bruin community can work to improve upon, the administration seems bent on taking the easier way out and focusing on the achievements Bruins have already accomplished and are expected to maintain. While it's important to work against a lapse in current excellence, a myopic focus on celebrating it prevents progress.

The worse thing about UCLA for me was the fact that I lived an hour away via bus and since I worked a full-time job while attending school I never had the chance to develop any long lasting frienships with professors or students. Like I mentioned before, it's a big public school with lots of students and sometimes you feel just like one of thousands. Never really getting any personal guidance or treamtment.

My school is very large; I come from a high school of fifteen hundred students, and now I attend a university with tens of thousands of undergraduates and all of the feelings of a large school. I was told that involvement in student organizations can make the school seem smaller and more personal; I am now a member of one organization and an officer of two others, but the school still feels incomprehensibly big. There is an impersonality to any group of people of such magnitude, but for some reason, it is accentuated at my school.

The difficulty and grading system like the gpa system