Due to the large amount of posts related to engineering, I decided to create a thread dedicated to that so the general UCLA 2024 Discussion can be more about UCLA in general.
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Here are the selected Engineering/CS posts from the General Discussion for the class of 2024 Thread, which necessitated this board to be created:
@firmament2x Wow! Just Wow! You are amazing! I am just trying to be helpful to anyone who is interested in CS at UCLA. My son and I are very close, and we talk a lot about school and his career in CS. He is currently on the board of DevX and has had paid internships from the summer after freshman year. He also has a best friend who is on the board of ACM Hack as well. Both of those are CS-related communities. He loves to help younger classmen and so did some Learning Assistant work for CS 31 and 32 as well. Anyway, that is why I happen to know some stuff about the UCLA CS program. He loves everything about CS and UCLA (especially the No. 1 rated dining halls).
On the other hand, I don’t know too much about the Communications major (for my daughter) so I will probably be asking some questions on the regular thread.
Thanks for answering our Qs.
For mechanical engineering:
- What are the average class sizes? Are some 180 like CS and EE?
- Are there a lot of group projects like there are for CS?
- I’ve heard that some of the engineering professors are difficult to understand. Is that the case with ME profs?
- ME seems like one of the larger engineering majors. Is it small enough to get to know profs and fellow students in the major pretty well?
- I’ve heard ME is very challenging at UCLA. Do many switch out of ME? Any thoughts/tips?
@collegeplan101 . . . I’ll try to present something comprehensive a little later, maybe tonight when I’m free, and run through the courses, unless there’s an ME major who can answer your questions much more quickly. I glanced at the courses and apparently HSSEAS combined Mechanical and Aerospace together – they’re separate majors, but it looks like they have some common classes.
Here’s an example ME major which presents a little over 40 classes taken from freshman through senior year, but it’s dated 2017-18, three years before you would possibly enter UCLA. I don’t know if this worksheet is relevant to 2020. Again, someone who’s a major in it might be able to help you better and more quickly.
Here’s the link: https://www.seasoasa.ucla.edu/curric-17-18/38curmech-17.html
It also looks like there might have been a run on classes for Spring 2020, because they seem to have larger class enrollment. Maybe @10s4life or someone could speak to this.
Here’s some information regarding your question 1: class sizes in ME at UCLA. Many E programs across the country will have pretty large classes, often over 100 students even in upper division, except for a really small college like Caltech and a few others. The CS department at Stanford, e.g., had an average class size of ~120, measured two years ago, per an article in the school newspaper.
Additionally, the more popular a professor is, the larger draw his/her classes will have for obvious reasons. Information is disseminated among students, and this will draw them to these professors’ classes. So the gist overall is that there should be a good amount of classes which are larger to show that an E program is healthy.
In that example four-year coursework of a ME student at UCLA, here are the class sizes within the E department for each of the three quarters for the classes listed for this student. The bold figures are the quarter this prospective student would have taken the course per that schedule in the link I supplied earlier.
Some initialisms: MAE is Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, MSE is Material Science Engineering, ECE is Electrical & Computer Engineering, and HSSEAS stands for the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
I didn’t input the class sizes for the MAE elective, the Technical Breadth, the HSSEAS Breadth, nor the ethics courses in the calculations.
I also listed the courses in the order of when this student would have taken them from freshman through senior year.
“A” stands for an average of sections of lectures or labs, and a “~” means an approximation of the class size based on the room the class was held.
Here are the numbers:
Course Title…Fall…Winter…Spring Quarter
MAE 94…73…55…62
MSE 104…41A…60A…67A
MAE 101…124…116…82
MAE 105A…98…130…127
MAE M20…102…112…~120
or
CS 31…203A…395…350
MAE 82…105…74…66
MAE 102…63…48…113
MAE 103…102…96…148
ECE 100…209…121…144
MAE 105D…93…130…95
MAE 183A…46…52…45
MAE 107…59…68…88
MAE 131A…53…—…—
or
MAE 133A…—…77…70
MAE 157…18A…28A…25
MAE 162A…70…—…84
ECE 110L…16A…16A…20A
MAE 156A…58…70…69
MAE 171A…70…66…70
MAE 162D…—…40…—
MAE Elective 1…—…—…—
MAE 162E…—…---…44
MAE Elective 2…—…---…—
HSSEAS GE, 1…—…—…—
HSSEAS GE, 2…—…—…—
HSSEAS GE, 3…—…—…—
Technical Breadth 1…—…—…—
Technical Breadth 2…—…---…—
Technical Breadth 3…—…—…---
HSSEAS, Ethics…—…—…---
Means for 3 quarters…84…93…96
Medians…70…69…82
W/O Other E classes, ECE and CS:
Means…76…78…83
Medians…70…69…82
And lest I forget for my three consecutive posts, inclusive, here is the course descriptions for the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering classes:
https://www.registrar.ucla.edu/Academics/Course-Descriptions/Course-Details?SA=MECH%26AE&funsel=3
@firmament2x – thanks for taking the time to break that down. that gives me a good idea. makes sense the popular profs have bigger classes, so I guess that’s a good sign.
do many ME’s switch to a different major?
is it hard to major in ME and minor in physics, or is ME so tough that no one really tries to?
I’ll leave these to @10s4life who’s in the EE major; he’ll be able to tell you much better than I can.
But for the second one, that might be pretty tough. This hypothetical coursework for the student only included three lower-division physics classes, and he/she ended up with 182 units, with 180 being a minimum. The max allowed is 213 units, so you’d have 31 units to fit in a physics minor.
Additionally, hopefully you’d have some APs that could knock off, say, Math 31A and 31B with AP Calculus BC test of three or better. That’s 8 units which you could add to your 31, making it 39 units.
You’d have to proceed like this, to see if a minor in physics would be possible. Actually it does sound possible.
The Discover Engineering page is live! Check out some of the videos and register for the interactive events! See you Sunday!
https://www.seasoasa.ucla.edu/discover/
A couple things to correct. The unit max is not enforced for engineers, so don’t worry about that.
You cannot skip anything with a 3 on the BC calculus. You can skip 31A with a 4 and 31A & 31B with a 5.
@Collegeplan101 You don’t necessarily need a second major or even a minor. You already take so many physics courses. You can take more physics courses without adding additional courses by choosing engineering sciences as your tech breadth.
@am2007 . . . thanks for the correction!
A three on BC would undoubtedly be too shaky to risk not being brought up to speed for 32A. And glad to hear that the unit max is not enforced for E majors.
Don’t be a stranger now that the E-message-board thread has been established!
For engineering admits: the UCLA Engineering Ambassador Team has started a Virtual Q&A Program for Admitted Students where you can sign up for personal sessions with pairs of Engineering Ambassadors. We offer 10 time slots per week with every single major represented. There are as many as 8 pairs of ambassadors in each time slot. You can choose which pairs of ambassadors you would like to speak to about anything! On the form there is a link to bios about each ambassador so you can choose a pair that aligns most with your interests. You can sign up for as many slots and ambassadors as you like. We know this isn’t the same as tours but hopefully this helps with your decision! Sign up links were sent to your email listed on your MyUCLA portal.
@10s4life
we have not received any info on Alumni scholarship?
Does that mean we didn’t get it?
Did anybody get it?
Thank you
@10s4life
Also, could you suggest the courses in community colleges that can get the credits for his freshman year. I heard that it also saves money.
Thank you