<p>yeah so do you guys think UCLA is that much harder or about the same as high school? usually high school is about 5-6 hours of class time a day, so how long are classes a day at UCLA? in high school, we usually take about 5,6,7 classes, how many classes do we take at a time at UCLA and how long are they each? is it also true that you don't necessarily have to go to class? that we don't have to go at all ??? do the professors take role or can anyone just go in the class and sit?</p>
<p>how many hours of class u have a day depends on how you make your schedule. i have no class mondays, but pretty heavy the other days. you may have 1 hour on one day and maybe 5 hours another day. you take about 3-4 classes each quarter. class times range from 50 minutes to about 2 hours, although there are some film classes and such that run a lot longer. whether u need to go to class or not depends on the class. one of my classes posts podcasts of all the lectures online, so i guess you could just watch it all in ur dorm room and show up for the tests. other classes you HAVE to go to lecture. huge lecture classes professors dont take roll (because there's obviously hundreds of kids), but some discussion sections do. i dont think ucla is that much harder than high school, but everyone will differ on that one.</p>
<p>Maybe a better way to look at it is that you only have about 13-16 hours of classes on average a week.</p>
<p>Typical classes are 50 minutes. Other special classes (like clusters, seminars or film.. or say north campus stuff) ranges considerably. For south campus courses, it's much more straightforward; each unit is about an hour of class. Discussion sections are usually "optional" unless the prof decides to give quizzes during those days. Otherwise, it's just review and working out homework problems.</p>
<p>In general, if the class is large (hundreds of students), lectures are "optional" too. Essentially, no one cares if you go to class or not. It's your money and grade. Of course, you could also be dropped from the class, depending on what it is.</p>
<p>can you describe the discussion sections? </p>
<p>also, are the class times flexible, like can you take some night classes and also morning classes or can you just finish taking all your classes in the morning and you're free?</p>
<p>discussion sections are about 20-25 people and they are designed to help you succeed in the course with a smaller group of people and a TA that runs the section. this way you can ask questions directly maybe about things you didn't understand from lecture etc. what theyre like varies a lot depending on the class, and some are mandatory and some are not. ive had some absolutely pointless sections and some really good ones that really integrated with the course material.</p>
<p>again, YOU make your own schedule each quarter, so you get to decide how it's gonna work. most classes are in the morning/early afternoon but there are many that run later too. so you could be done really early everyday or late everyday depending on what classes you take and when they are offered.</p>
<p>Often times you won't have too many choices with scheduling. Sometimes classes overlap and you don't have the option but to not take it that quarter or take another lecture that's at some other random time that's still inconvenient. Other times it would be back to back, but on opposite sides of campus. Or the more typical scenario: you have gaps between them. Another likely thing to happen is that some of your preferred lecture times will be full. Also, courses don't always have an early and late lecture.</p>
<p>So basically, you try to optimize it as much as possible to your liking, but don't expect it to perfectly work out.</p>
<p>The classes at UCLA usually consist of 4 hours of lecture/discussion per day... The difference between UCLA and high school all depends on the size (1000 people versus 300 people), location (urban versus suburban) and competitiveness (high API versus low API) of the high school you came from. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>well, my high school has the highest api in norcal and its uber suburbia and each class size ranges from 30-40 students. how do you think ucla would compare?</p>
<p>
[quote]
well, my high school has the highest api in norcal and its uber suburbia and each class size ranges from 30-40 students. how do you think ucla would compare?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>you probably went to monta vista. i know people from there setting the curve in classes (someone on this CC forum) and others who get drunk the night before but ace the exam the next day. </p>
<p>if your school has an API of 8 or higher, then you're probably more than prepared for UCLA, assuming you put in effort.</p>
<p>if you took the IB Diploma program or a rigorous AP load, then the college workload will probably be easier for you, although that can depend on your major too.</p>
<p>IMO, I won't weigh API that much because frankly many students just doesn't seem to want to learn, and drags the standardized test scores down. I've seen people who sit across from me bubble randomly then go to sleep during the testing. I went to a 4000 student high school, and I can say about a quarter truly cared about learning/focusing on academics.</p>
<p>API is a joke for a lot of schools in California. A huge percent of students at my school (probably close to 40% or maybe more) are taking English as a second language. A great number of students are from a lower socio-economic class. So I think maybe our API was a 3 or something. </p>
<p>However, I'm in the IB program, which consists of a very small very intelligent group of students who only take classes with other IB students. I've had the same 30 kids in all my classes all 4 years. And most of us came from this very elite gifted/talented middle school, that's got the 3rd highest API in the Bay Area or something. (They steal all the smartest students from all the schools in our district, it's quite hilarious.)</p>
<p>So API can mean absolutely nothing.</p>
<p>assuming you didnt take the IB program, i think API has <em>some</em> impact. the academic environment does reasonably correlate with the API. we all know the good high schools still have high API scores, even when some students randomly bubble in their tests. </p>
<p>in general, going to a school with a higher API probably not only meant more AP classes, but better quality students in those AP classes. school was more competitive, grades were harder to earn, etc. there is a significant difference in the academic environment and quite possibly the preparation level of a high school with an API of 8 or 9 and a high school with an API level of 4 or 5. </p>
<p>so, you made it to UCLA regardless of your high school's API score, which means the adcom believes you have what it takes to handle UCLA. the difference is, some kids are more academically prepared to handle the UCLA academics because they have been challenged in high school, whether they went to a top high school, took many AP courses, or went through the IB program.</p>
<p>"in general, going to a school with a higher API probably not only meant more AP classes, but better quality students in those AP classes."</p>
<p>Correct. IMO, the API <em>can</em> be an indication of the quality of the student body, but not the teachers. It is misleading to assume that because the API of a school is low, the teachers do not know how to teach/teach poorly as many parents seem to think.</p>
<p>my school has the highest api in the state!!!</p>
<p>^^Couldn't agree with that more! Many people assume low API translates into less qualified teachers, and thus less qualified students. In fact that's very untrue. There are many brillant teachers who don't want to waste their skills teaching bright students who will achieve in any environment, so they go to schools where students are lacking for whatever reason and try and help them. There were tons of teachers at my school who refused to teach IB because we weren't the kind of students they wanted to be teaching. But in the end, many of these great teachers ended up teaching us anyways, and we have had some terrific teachers.</p>
<p>Now to address two comments above:</p>
<p>"in general, going to a school with a higher API probably not only meant more AP classes, but better quality students in those AP classes"</p>
<p>Okay, I know you said in general, but I still feel like that is just an incorrect statement. I think higher API just means more students are qualified, not that they are more qualified. And honestly, I disagree that extremely competitive environments breed top quality students. Because we only have that small group of 30 of us who know each other so well, and since there is no limit to how many A's we can get or how many diploma's our school is passing out, we aren't really that competitive with each other. We all work our butts off and help each other and are extremely successful together. And that lack of pressure has allowed us to thrive and have some of the most intelligent and creative discussions.</p>
<p>And of course, as you pointed out, this could have everything to do with the nature of the IB program. We aren't really involved with a non academic environment even though that is how most of the school is, so perhaps I'm not the best person to judge.</p>
<p>I think my real frustration comes from seeing students from my G&T middle school go to nearby high schools that have high API's (mostly because they are all the rich kids) and these students are getting into Stanford and Brown and Yale and Harvard (etc etc). And totally equal if not harder working students from my G&T middle school who went to my high school can't get in anywhere except UC's. And a good chunk of these kids have worked a lot harder then the kids at the high API schools. Colleges have the same bias you have, but from everything I've seen, it's just not true and it's really unfair. So who knows.</p>