Can I get into UCLA

You might need to just take a step back and realize going to school in California may not be the best choice, even if it’s the only place you want to go to. There’s a lot more to schools than location

If your dream is “California”, look into Loyola Marymount or Pepperdine. Both have solid reputations, but your GPA and SAT scores just might get you the aid you need. Also, they both sit on bluffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean and really give you that quintessential, laid back Southern California lifestyle. Yes, both are religious-affiliated, but it is by no means a requirement to be religious to go to them. Many, many students are not.

Visiting our towns in California is nothing like attending classes at the public universities. Weather excepted. Also, everything is expensive.
You seem to be afraid of the privates and don’t seem to understand that religious faith isn’t a requirement to attend.

You will be in LARGE classes at the California publics. Some GE classes are 300-500 students. There are weeder classes. Plus, the public schools can and do change requirements according to weather and environmental changes. That doesn’t mean you get out of syllabi requirements. My neighbor’s daughter is at Santa Barbara. He indicated that UCSB released the students early, from the school, during the fires. The finals were postponed. The students now need to return to take their finals; the students are not happy about that, and, they were required to turn in final projects in person before they left. It’s a public school.

@“aunt bea” I don’t think you know exactly what you are talking about. The fires in California were so devastating it would be irresponsible of UCSB to NOT delay finals. What on earth does that have to do with it being a public school, for heaven sake?

“Public schools can and do change requirements according to weather and environmental changes.” - I’m sorry, this is just the most ludicrous statement. Can you site any other scenario to back that statement up? Would you prefer the students had risked their health and safety in order to take their finals??

I’m just at a loss with your conclusions…

I’d also like to clarify your statement about GE classes being 300-500 students. At UCLA only 12% of all classes offered are over 100. Meanwhile, 50% of all classes are under 20 students. Please keep some perspective here.

Private schools aren’t insanely different. 60% of USC classes are under 20 students, and 11% are over 50.

All of this data is at collegedata dot com.

@KTJordan78

D and S both attends UCs. D has had 1000+ in many classes. S attends UCLA and half of his classes have had 500+

D in her final semester and in her technical upper division classes she still has 200+ In summer classes, she had fewer students in addition the foreign language and random upper div social science classes seem to be smaller. The stats are not indicative of all majors or sequencing.

My kids are in engineering/CS and Biology.

Yes, they do change the requirements and it can be a moving target to ensure one is on track.

The UCSB students I know, who are now home, are not complaining about the evacuation. But were asking for some other accommodations like written papers or take home tests—to avoid taking a month off and then returning to take their finals.

@svlab112 I too went to UCLA and had maybe 3-4 large classes of about 200 my freshman year and that was it. Everything else was much smaller, but that was only my personal experience. I definitely was not a CS or Biology major. That is not the experience for folks outside of those majors.

UCLA has a student/faculty ratio of 17/1, FWIW.

@svlab112 I think your son was exaggerating or reporting inaccurate numbers because I highly doubt there are any 500+ classes, let alone any classroom to put all those students. Half the classes I took were biology, and I never saw or heard of such ridiculous numbers. The largest classes I had were 200-300.

Agreed. There simply aren’t lecture halls at UCLA like that. The largest lecture hall at UCLA is in Moore Hall and it seats 400. This is a fact. Look it up.

And seeing as how UCLA is the biggest UC, I seriously doubt any other campus could possibly host a single 1000-student class. I think you’ve been tricked!

@KTJordan78,
Reread my comment.

Please note that the OP is:
OOS but needs needs financial aid to attend a California public school.

He appears to not care what the school is, as long as it is public and in California.

So, he’s asking his parents to fork over a minimum of $40k for a California public school.

The OP appears adamant to discount private CA school education where there is funding available.
Our UCs are very good, but so are the schools in Texas. He would save his parents a lot of money by attending school instate.

I don’t know why you’re getting upset at a comment where I referred to a neighbor. But you didn’t really thoroughly read that part. @svlab112 is absolutely correct. It wasn’t the evacuation that upset the students, it was the requirements for completion of class requirements that upset the students. (Students we’re not allowed to turn in papers via email. They had to turn in papers to the dept offices while the fire loomed.).

These are some things that occur at large publics.

The OP needs to be aware that he won’t get Aid in California and his family will be paying big bank to have him attend a public school that is similar to his instate choices.

Ludicrous? My daughter’s bio class had 500 at her UC. She even took a picture of her class and shared it with social media. Have you attended every bio section that makes you an expert at all of the UCs?
The Santa Rosa fire impacted Berkeley, UCSF, and Sonoma this past October, and each school reacted differently. At UCSF, the students were given face masks and classes were not canceled, but the air was toxic.

@“aunt bea” ,

I’m sorry, you’re just wrong. UCSB reacted by cancelling classes because the fires were actually IN Santa Barbara. Look at a map of the fires.

I live in San Francisco, and can personally attest to the fact that SF was not negatively affected by the Santa Rosa fires, apart from some hazy days. Of course classes at UCSF weren’t cancelled. Nothing in San Francisco was cancelled.

Please explain why an institution’s status as a public school in any way explains why it would cancel class during an emergency? Do you actually think a private school surrounded by flames wouldn’t do the same? And is that somehow a good thing?

Any school, private or public, would react the same way in such a circumstance. It’s so bizarre to try and blame the action on the school’s source of funding…

@“aunt bea” Our son goes to UCSB and they absolutely did the right thing by postponing finals. The air quality was hazardous at that time and power had been intermittent for days. He’s none too happy to have to study over the break, but he was very happy to get out of that area during the fires. They gave out 10s of thousands of N95 masks for free in the area, but it was still awful. Another parent on this site lives in the area and they left for a few days to get some decent air. Surely it wasn’t an easy decision to postpone finals, because there are lots of special cases and people are affected in different ways, but it was the right thing.

@KTJordan78 UCLA is kind of unique in that it has the largest enrollment of any UC, but the largest classes are smaller than other UCs. UCSB has several classes in the 500-600 range and Berkeley has classes in the 800-1000 range. At some point, is there much difference between 400 and 800 in a class? Probably not IMO.

The reason I don’t want private schools is because they are so expensive. Also I’d prefer it if the school was fairly selective <30% and a large student body >40,000. Also forget California if that can’t happen, any college if it meets this criteria is fine:
->Fairly selective(<30%)
->Large student body(>40,000)
->Preferably in a large city(eg. LA, Atlanta, NYC)
->Affordable(30-40k all expenses)
->Preferably no religious affiliation

Thank you for your time!!!

I agree. Virtually every class in law school has about 90 or so people in it, and I can say from experience that anything beyond 60-70 people may as well be 300, 500, or 700. It just feels like a lecture hall.

Well as a current Ucla student I can tell you that the largest class is just under 500 students and it’s Phy Sci 5 which is a GE. Moore hall only seats just over 500 anyways. Most of the stem weeder classes are between 177-220. GEs can go up to 360ish. A 1000s person class just doesn’t exist at Ucla. Also students at Ucla were also angry as they drew the fire evacuation zone literally around the school evacuating the streets right next to Ucla. The comment about UCSB not being accommodating was making the students take finals after the quarter ends. She was insinuating that UCSB if it were a smaller private school, could have decided to cancel finals and have professors base grades on existing work. I have friends at SB that are upset over having to study for finals over winter break.

@TheApplicant3967 If you really want to get into UCLA, I’d recommend coming to CA to go to a CC. It’s a lot easier to get into UCLA from a CC than it is from HS. Also, you don’t lose any time. Plus, you’ll be able to claim in-state residency when you’re at UCLA since you would have already been in CA for two years. I transferred into UCLA as a biz-econ major, so I can walk you through the process if you’re interested.

Coming to CA for the purposes of an education and attending a CA CC does not make an applicant a CA resident for tuiton purposes. Not so easy if you have an OOS HS transcript.

To establish residence for tuition purposes, you must satisfy 3 conditions:
Physical presence
Intent to become a California resident
Financial independence

  1. Physical presence
    You must be physically present in California for more than one year (366 days) immediately prior to the residence determination date of the term for which resident classification is requested. You must have come here with the intent to make California your home as opposed to coming to this state to go to school.

Physical presence within the state solely for educational purposes doesn’t constitute the establishment of California residence, regardless of the length of your stay. A student who leaves California after establishing residence must demonstrate that he/she intended to remain a California resident, and that his/her principal place of residence has been in California. It’s the burden of the student to clearly demonstrate retention of California residence during periods of absence from the state.

The physical presence requirement will be extended until the student can demonstrate a concurrence of both physical presence and intent for one full year.

  1. Intent to become a California resident
    Demonstrate through objective documentation that your physical presence was coupled with the intent to make California your permanent home. Intent is evaluated as an independent element of residence, separate from physical presence, and is demonstrated by establishing residential ties in California, and relinquishing ties to the former place of residence.

You must demonstrate your intention to make California your home by severing your residential ties with your former state of residence and establishing those ties with California. If these steps are delayed, the one-year duration period will be extended until you have demonstrated both presence and intent for one full year.

Indications of your intent to make California your permanent residence include:
California driver’s license or a California ID Card
Voter registration card or affidavit from Registrar of Voters
California-based bank accounts or CA branches based in other states
California car registration and car insurance card
Paying California income taxes as a resident, including taxes on income earned outside California
Housing contracts, monthly rental agreements, lease or proof of property ownership
Credit and memberships with California merchants, religious affiliations, clubs, gyms
Proof of your belongings moved into California such as moving van, bill of lading
Proof of utilities established in your name such as phone, gas, electric, and cable TV
Designating California as your permanent address on all school, employment, and/or military records
The absence of these indicia in other states during any period for which you claim residence can also serve as an indication of your intent. Your intent will be questioned if you return to your former state of residence when the university is not in session. Documentary evidence is required and all relevant indications will be considered in determining your classification.

  1. Financial independence
    Students under age 24 who didn’t attend the university prior to fall 1993 and are not dependent on a California resident parent who meets the university’s requirements for residence for tuition purposes (one year physical presence with intent to remain in the state), also must meet the university’s financial independence requirement in addition to the 366-day physical presence and intent requirements.

Note: This requirement makes it extremely difficult for most undergraduates who do not have a parent living in California to qualify for classification as a resident at a UC campus. This includes transfer students from community colleges and other post-secondary schools in California.

Effective winter 2005, registered domestic partners are included in rules that apply to spouses.

You are considered financially independent if you meet all of the following criteria. You:
Are unmarried, and
Student was not claimed as an income tax dependent by any individual for the two tax years immediately preceding the term for which resident classification is requested, and
Student is self-sufficient. He has supported himself for two full years prior to the residence determination date of the term he proposes to attend the University through his own resources, such as employment, commercial/institutional loans in his name only, financial aid and saving from earnings, all of which require official documentation (note: the two years required for self-support might not coincide with the two tax years he must not have been claimed by any individual). Budget Worksheet (PDF)
To verify financial independence (self-sufficiency/ self-support), the student must document his or her income and verify that he or she was not claimed as an exemption by parents or anyone else for the two years prior to the request for residence.
The student is also required to present a budget showing how he or she is able to be supported by the funds claimed.
Self-support is defined as money which can be officially documented that the student has earned through his or her own employment, commercial loans, financial aid, savings and/ or other loans obtained with the student’s own credit, without a cosigner. Parent PLUS loans cannot be considered self-support.
Loans or gifts from relatives, associates, or friends, regardless of the terms, are considered financial assistance and cannot be included as student income when determining self-support. Non-institutional loans or funds that are “gifted” to the student by a relative, associate, or friend, through a “college fund,” savings, trust, or other financial vehicle, will not be considered if the funds were established after the student’s 14th birthday.
If the student’s income is a trust account established prior to the student’s 14th birthday, the student must also verify that he or she has complete control of the trust, that the funds available at the time of origination were sufficient to allow the student to be entirely self-supporting, and that the trust has been in use to support the student. Copies of yearly beginning balances, withdrawals, deposits, and ending balances of the trust account(s) will be required. Non-verifiable income cannot be considered.
Residing in California with an aunt, uncle, grandparent, or friend who provides the student with room and board cannot be considered self-support, even if that person meets the UC residence requirement. “Bartering” for free room and board or other services or necessities will be considered financial assistance.
The financial independence requirement will not be a factor in residence determination if you are a student who is financially dependent upon a California resident parent who meets the university’s requirements for residence for tuition purposes (one year physical presence with intent to remain in the state).