<p>I am a UCLA Engineering alumnus who went through a similar experience. I also had a 3.4 GPA my second year. When I first enrolled in UCLA, I was excited to be at a place where (I thought) people learn for the sake of learning. I was naive. I didn’t get very good grades my first 1.5 years - I just wanted to learn things and enjoy learning. Then I realized something - I am going to forget what I learn after exams anyway! So I might as well focus on learning through an exam-based approach and focus on getting A’s in my classes. “If these people who aren’t really passionate about the subject get higher GPA’s than me then I can do it too,” I thought. And so I did.</p>
<p>I think one of the consequences of putting all these over-achievers into one place (such as UCLA) is that you get all these people who are conditioned to get good grades and take on leadership roles in extracurriculars. During senior year, these same students will be striving to get positions at places like Google, Microsoft, Goldman Sachs, Accenture, Intel, etc. I am currently in a PhD program at another top school and I notice a similar academic culture. I also witnessed a similar thing at another top school where I was a visiting student. </p>
<p>I didn’t like most of the students in my engineering major because it appeared to me that they weren’t that passionate about the subject and just wanted good grades so they can get jobs after graduation. Now that I think about it, it’s perfectly okay. The world doesn’t need everyone to be so passionate in the subject that they get a PhD in it (we already have too many PhDs in certain subjects…). Almost all of my friends in college were outside my major (though most of them were engineers…) though I got along with everyone in my major.</p>
<p>As for forgetting what you learn - it is inevitable. If you ask me about things like optical resonators, binary search trees, Carnot cycles, central limit theorem, the effects of the chirality of carbon nanotubes, or physical metallurgy, I probably could not provide a good answer and have forgotten a lot of it, but I do know where to look it up and remember the general ideas. Learning something that you have forgotten takes much less time than the first time.</p>