My daughter will attend UCLA as a Freshman in Fall 2018. She is now pondering whether to enroll in the College Summer Institute (CSI) for Freshmen. If she decides to attend CSI, she’ll probably take Chemistry and Writing. Does anyone have advice/experience/knowledge about CSI that they wish to share? For instance, based on experience or knowledge, is the six-week CSI session too compressed - or is it doable? Does UCLA have tutors/learning assistants available during the CSI session to provide extra help to students?
Thanks in advance for your feedback!
My advice is don’t do it. CSI and FSP are big wastes of money and are $$$$$ makers for Ucla. Enjoy the summer and look forward to working very hard for the next 30 weeks. You’ll be surprised how worn out someone can be after 3 quarters of college.
@10s4life What makes UCLA’s program a waste of money? For comparison, UCSB’s summer program is excellent and basically everyone that does it says it was beneficial and even students who didn’t do it either say they wished they had or still recommend it. I looked into the UCLA program for our son, but the limited class selection did not make it worthwhile for him. UCSB’s class selection is basically the full summer session schedule. But if someone has useful classes towards their major they can take, why would it be a waste?
@youcee For nearly all majors not named engineering, there is actually very little requirements for the actual major itself to where students can graduate on time without any kind of AP credit while taking 3 classes per quarter. If a student were to pay for summer it is much better to pay for a summer session post freshman year. There they can better gauge what classes they might want to take if they want to get ahead and the selection is much greater since they aren’t under the fsp and csi restrictions. The only real benefit I see is for the first gen oriented program where the student takes some of the prepare for college classes if they don’t have a support system at home to prepare them.
One limitation of CSI is that there are specific courses that you must choose from if you are part of that program. I think there’s one Chemistry course, but it’s Chem 14A, which isn’t the chemistry you take if you are an engineer or if you’re in one of the “hard” sciences (they take 20A). Otherwise, it’s a bunch of GEs.
I think the benefit is that you get a transition to college and you are part of a cohort of people who you’ll live among and potentially take classes with. But as 10s4life said, that’s a lot of money to pay to “get ahead” when most majors can graduate in 4 years without needing to do any of that.
If you’re in a unit-heavy major like engineering and you want to take summer school, it might be smarter to take a course or two at your local community college, which will be cheaper and you don’t need to pay rent either. Just make sure you talk to someone at UCLA who can verify if the courses you’re taking will satisfy a graduation requirement. Please note that if you are out-of-state, UCLA might not be able to give you as firm an answer, as it’s likely they have not seen anyone take a course from that particular community college before. But if it’s a CA community college, they can likely give you a concrete answer.
@10s4life I agree with you on some points and disagree on another. As the person who paid for a summer program at UCSB, we felt it was very worthwhile to get that early start. If UCLA’s had a better selection of courses we would have had our son do it there too. UCLA requires fewer units for some engineering majors, so that makes a difference too. Say for ME, they’re taking 13-14 that first quarter at UCLA whereas at UCSB it’s 17-18 if they want to stay on track. Being ready to hit the ground running is super important. At UCSB they can also take some required engineering courses like a Matlab course in the summer, so very worthwhile. The GE taken in the summer can keep you from having to take 4 engineering plus a GE in the same quarter in 3rd year. Fewer units plus 5 unit GE courses at UCLA - I guess you guys have it easy. 
Anyway, I was just genuinely curious why you don’t think the program is valuable in general at UCLA. We just have a different perspective from having seen how it is quite popular at UCSB and especially good for engineers there.