<p>First off,</p>
<p>what do current UCLA students consider a: very easy courseload, easy courseload, average courseload, hard courseload, and extremely intense courseload? How many units and/or classes per semester? Any personal experiences? How many units are most classes?</p>
<p>And, well I’m not too sure how many ppl can answer this from personal experience (since not many have been students at both LA and Cal), but how is the general air of academic competition compared to that of Berkeley’s? </p>
<p>I know Berkeley is a really competitive school (lots of cutthroats there), and seeing that UCLA’s incoming freshmen have similar academic ability coming in (some would even say MORE so), how does it compare?</p>
<p>I’m intending to major in Econ at Berkeley, Business Econ at UCLA.</p>
<p>thx for your help!!!</p>
<p>Most classes are 4 or 5 units. There are some classes like labs or fiat lux seminars that are less. The typical course load is around 15 units. If you’re taking 18 you’ll likely be doing more work; if you take 12 you’ll be doing less. If you’re in the mid-20’s, it would probably be pretty intense. This also depends on how much work you want to put in (which in turn depends on a variety of things, like your interest in the material or what else is going on in your life). The vast majority of people take either 3 or 4 classes.</p>
<p>Individual classes can also vary a lot. Some 4 unit classes are much more difficult and time consuming than others.</p>
<p>hmm, that’s interesting. Berkeley runs on the semester system, but according to their registrar webpage, “15 units is a normal courseload.” I thought at UCLA ppl would take fewer credits/classes at a time since it runs on the rather fast quarter system?</p>
<p>The good thing about the quarter system (UCLA) in comparison to the semester (Berkeley) is that its easier to rack up a quick number of credits. If you maintain a pace of 4 classes per quarter, you’ll come out ahead of your Berkeley peers taking 5 classes per semester! The extra work per quarter adds up faster than extra work per semester so you could graduate quicker.</p>
<p>Quarter units =/= Semester units</p>
<p>If you were trying to transfer course credit from UC Berkeley to UCLA, the number of units you have from Berkeley would be multiplied by 1.5. Most of the classes there are 3 units (I believe), and you would get 4.5 units of credit if you transferred those to UCLA. The same goes for credit transferred from most semester schools. For example, because of a half unit class I took at a CC in high school, the number of units I have here ends in .8 - also the minimum number of units for graduation at UCLA is 180 to most semester schools’ 120.</p>
<p>A unit is just roughly an hour’s worth of class each week, so at Berkeley a unit would be ~15 hours of class time, while at UCLA it would be ~10. Some schools use a different system that factors in expected work out of class, and I think the units taken at a time at those schools tends to be in the 40’s.</p>