Yeah … and these probably have very little to do with undergraduate rankings.
I remember when I was a CS undergrad. I thought first and foremost what mattered
was the quality of the peers. I remembered profs pushed us to the limit with the level
of work … and that limit was clearly a function of the resilience of the student.
Even in lesser schools, the Professors know the undergrad material very well.
Some are good teachers, some are bad teachers (I think “teaching” quality evens out
across professors and is NOT a function of the school ranking). So when they have a high
quality student body - they can push it more.
I was in no way implying this ranking/website applies to undergraduate programs. I was replying to a specific question about what my thoughts are on the USC graduate program, which is why I started my reply admitting I don’t know about CS graduate programs, but thought I’d share a website I came across that specifically looks at graduate programs. I understand ranking methodology is never perfect, but I thought there is enough raw data on the website that may be helpful for the person asking and even for someone who may have aspirations for a CS masters and look into the school’s sub specialties for potential research opportunities. I am sorry if I come across as saying this is an undergraduate assessment.
@edragonfly @dimkin: Please keep the discussion focus on the original question about UCLA. If it continues, I will flag your posts for the moderators to handle
Thank you UC Forum Champion.
If the engineering departments want to offer a less competitive entry to the majors for currently enrolled students, then they need to make space by reducing the number of students directly admitted through frosh admission.
Really, what you want is for them to increase departmental capacity to allow for larger numbers of students in high demand majors. Note that this may also require increasing departmental capacity in some other departments like math and physics for some prerequisite courses.
In regard to your first ¶, I think it wouldn’t necessarily be a bad idea if those admitted undeclared + those admitted to HSSEAS > those currently admitted straight to HSSEAS, and hopefully it would be a decent amount greater. This is because E applicants have a greater proportion of those with high stats than those who apply to L&S majors. Thus, those who aren’t admitted to E would have great options for E-type jobs by the majors which are offered in L&S: Physics, Applied Math, and the other Math majors, Stats, the Computational majors, [edit:] Data Theory etc.
With respect to your second ¶, I’m actually thinking more of the 32,000 E apps which have been wasted without any kind of further consideration of their admissive qualities which ties into what I stated above. UCLA could allow them to {pick an alternate major} outside of E, and further consider them for admittance.
Then there’s how far UCLA has fallen behind UCB, UCSD, UCD, and UCI in the number of E/CS type STEMs who graduate from each of these universities.
In that way, UCLA and UCSB are more similar, with UCLA having more future MD and health professional types. Similarly UCB and UCSD are perhaps the most similar as they are heavily into the E emphasis of STEM. UCLA produces more attorneys than the rest of the UCs and probably the most of any university in the country, and UCLA and UCB produce a lot of quant and marketing type business people.
I guess what I’m getting at is that the big hole in UCLA’s degree conferrals would be those in E, so it’s kind of like STeM at UCLA. There’s no real shortage at UCB in anything, but it’s especially strong in E, same as UCSD, UCI, UCD.
And this was the intention of Dr. Samueli’s gift, to hire 100 more E/CS professors. But even when UCLA expands its E/CS majors by > 1,000, that still doesn’t bring UCLA up to speed with the other UCs, or by what the nation needs.
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Thanks for the informative analysis!
You’re quite welcome. I didn’t want this thread to bubble to the top, but I needed to make some corrections in what I thought of UCLA’s not harvesting E apps to the best of its ability, and thereby to prop up its E school and quant programs, so your post perhaps has given me an opportunity to make these corrections, so thank you too. The links I use are from the following links: HSSEAS Report and UCLA Enrollment 2018-2021 :
Total Apps E Apps % of E Apps
2018 113,755 26,195 23.0%
2019 111,321 25,804 23.2%
2020 108,870 24,039 22.1%
2021 139,463 30,821 22.1%
I used 2020’s more conservative % of those who applied to E programs in 2020 to come up with 2021’s estimation of E apps.
E Acc E Acc % E Enr E Yield
2018 2,987 11.4% 924 30.9%
2019 2,505 9.7% 772 30.8%
2020 2,640 11.0% 751 28.4%
2021 2,600 8.4% 728 28.0%
Acceptance rate went up in 2020 from 2019 because of COVID, but rate should go down in 2021, because of restrictive E enrollment.
Number of E Applicants Discarded
E Apps E Acc. E Rej. %Apps Disc
2018 26,195 2,987 23,208 20.4%
2019 25,804 2,505 23,299 20.9%
2020 24,039 2,640 21,399 19.7%
2021 30,821 2,600 28,221 20.2%
I was considerably off in the number of wasted E applicants when I stated that ~ 32k of them were discarded without an alternate major. This shows that there are more like {edit:}21-23k {E applicants} who have been discarded without a chance to pick an alternate {in Letters and Science}. UCLA is probably the worst offender of all the UCs {in not harvesting top-tier applicants, by giving them a second or third choice major}. Because of this {an increasing higher % of E applicants don’t have any allegiance to UCLA, and that’s one of the reasons why the yield is low and may actually be decreasing, besides the competitive aspect between colleges for E students.}
That would seem to be how applying to the Ivies is; a student applying there can’t really have a favorite Ivy college because of a lack of guarantee of entry. So consequently, many who have UCLA as a “dream college” will for safety reasons pick majors like Applied Math or another of the ~ seven math majors, Stats, the new Data Theory major, Linguistics and CS, maybe Cognitive Science and do the Specialization in Computing, Math of Computation, or Computational and Systems Bio.