<p>I’m not exactly sure as to why UCLA claims to have 130 majors. It seems to me that a lot of their majors are really redundant. If UCLA really wanted to, it could easily consolidate about 30 majors into 3 or 4. I am mainly taking about their linguistics, language, and ethnic studies programs. I bring this up because of just how competitive it is to get into its college of engineering. It seems like the university is wasting a lot of resources that could other wise be spent on offering admission to engineering students. I say this because I believe that admission is to the college of engineering is too competitive. I find it unbelievable that last year only 6 students got into the CS major and the year before that was still bad, with only 18 students getting in. </p>
<p>College of Engineering is too competitive? As opposed to what? UCLA is a top-tier university that’s been receiving the most transfer and freshman applications for a while now. I’m surprised it isn’t more competitive at the transfer level, really, and especially for the College of Engineering.</p>
<p>And is UCLA really wasting resources with these “redundant” majors? How would you go about showing that they’re redundant? How are they wasting resources with these other majors? Which of these majors are redundant? </p>
<p>Further, how can you show that these redundant majors are responsible for the competitiveness of unrelated fields, such as engineering? I’m pretty sure The College of Engineering is competitive because space is limited <em>within</em> the various departments that comprise that college. </p>
<p>Finally, why is this important at all? It’s not as if one major is more valuable than another. I’m sure some might retort with economic arguments or something, but economic value isn’t the only kind of value that exists. “Linguistics and Spanish”, for example, has just as much a right to exist as aerospace engineering at UCLA, until the school decides otherwise. Somehow, I don’t think a university would decide to diminish its major offerings unless it absolutely needed to, and UCLA doesn’t seem to need to.</p>
<p>The CoE at UCLA makes no sense to me. Trying to make it impossible for people to switch in or transfer in is ridiculous. There is a perception like the CoE is so impacted when it is really not. A lot of their engineering programs aren’t even that great… I remember reading on here about someone who was in a not so popular engineering major and said their classes were all nearly empty every quarter. </p>
<p>But this is bureaucracy at its finest. All the UCs are like this in some way or another. </p>
<p>Very interesting @csb111</p>
<p>When something is hard to attain, the value of it rises, even it it’s not really worth much. </p>
<p>@Cayton </p>
<p>College of Engineering is too competitive? As opposed to what?</p>
<p>As opposed to other majors that have similar admitted GPA’s, like economics. Other programs have accommodated for the large demand. However, the college of engineering has not. UCLA only has a certain amount of money, so they can only spend so much money on so many programs. I believe that the college of engineering has not grown to accommodate the large demand for it.</p>
<p>@CSB111 Yeah, they won’t let my brother switch from Mechanical Engineering, to CS. I think it is really stupid.</p>
<p>Here are two examples…when I was at orientation for the Econ department, they said you could apply for Biz Econ if you were accepted as an Econ major. I didn’t understand this. They talk about the major being super impacted/no leniency with a high avg admitted GPA, but they let you apply (they are under the same department, but with Biz Econ being the “prestigious” major). If you are an outside major and finish the requirements with the GPA (which is a pretty tough 3.5), you still can’t get in. </p>
<p>If you have the requirements done and can finish in time with decent grades, I don’t see the fuss. Even as a transfer, you should be able to explore classes/change your mind if you meet the requirements and can finish everything in a reasonable time (no more then 3 years). I liked different subjects, but when you’re at CC, you are trying to transfer out promptly, so you have to pick a path that allows you to do so. Classes aren’t always available, time doesn’t last forever. Do you think people are going to stay at CC for another year when they have two physics classes to finish? No. But if you don’t, you are probably an auto reject for UCLA, and you can’t switch in. </p>
<p>I don’t think getting rid of “useless” majors in other departments would help…</p>
<p>I transferred to Cal, EECS, and didn’t look into UCLA much. EECS is also super competitive. Why? Because it’s an amazing program, and so many students want to get in. So yes, it has to be competitive.</p>
<p>The department has also done a pretty good job at expanding. Last fall, 1000 students were enrolled in 61A (“intro” CS class). That’s huge, 200 more students than the largest auditorium on campus can hold. Every single professor seemed stressed about the increased class sizes. They had trouble finding rooms big enough. Some had issues getting enough time/rooms for lab sections. Some were in desperate need of GSIs and couldn’t find enough qualified people. Some classes simply could not expand, classes like User Interfaces haven’t figured out how to expand past ~100 students. The result? They have 300 students wanting to enroll, have everyone fill out a petition for the class, and kick of 2/3 of the interested students. But it’s not just a budget issue. It’s an issue of needing amazing professors, finding enough space on campus, and resources in general being stretched thin. Accommodating hundreds of students just doesn’t happen overnight. The EECS acceptance rate is somewhere near 10%, and that’s still more students than the department can handle, even while they’re actively trying to fix the problems.</p>
<p>And CoE has funds here. They renovated all the lower div CS labs last year, and there’s been other construction happening pretty consistently around the engineering part of campus. GSIs and researchers are also paid pretty well. On the other hand, I’ve had humanities classes that suffered from budget cuts. They’d apologize that the class couldn’t afford to hold sections, or that they didn’t have the funds to get more GSIs. And yes, their acceptance rates are higher, but that doesn’t mean they’re being treated better, or that the department has a bigger budget.</p>
<p>Anyways, I don’t think simply throwing more money at engineering programs is going to fix anything. Again, my experience is Cal, not UCLA, but the department has money. That doesn’t mean they have enough staff or room on campus, nor does it mean they can suddenly scale to accommodate twice as many students. I don’t know UCLA’s story or why their department is so small. They might have decided that small class sizes are important (upper div CS at UCB tends to be 100-300 students), or maybe they just don’t have enough teaching staff to handle more students than that. But kicking out all the humanities kids isn’t going to magically fix the competition issues in STEM fields.</p>
<p>@failure622 This is exactly my point. Even though EECS is so impacted, the program is way better than CS or EE at UCLA, they expand the department to fit as many people as possible and they offer a minor in EECS, and you can get a minor in CS. Even if you didn’t get into EECS, there is still the CS major that you can get in which is virtually the same minus a few core classes. Way more flexibility, everyone has a chance to get into the major, even during their junior year! You have a way better chance of transferring into EECS or CS from CC as well then any UCLA engineering major. Plus, they don’t require a bunch of BS, like chem classes (what?) and a year of physics with big labs for CS. </p>
<p>I haven’t even started at UCLA but I was so excited because I thought I could mix and match some classes because my major only requires 13 classes. Everyone tells you to expand your horizons or whatever, but it seems only if I want to take history classes…Then when the time comes all I’ve gotten is “no that isn’t possible” or “you can’t enroll in that” or some dumb technicality/restriction.</p>
<p>EDIT: Also the upper division engineering classes are so small at UCLA! I just looked at the EE schedule, the biggest class (one of the first upper divisions) has 150 person capacity, and only has 75 spots filled and registration is over. The biggest capacity CS classes are no more than 100 people. </p>
<p>It’s possible one of the reasons they can’t expand the CS department is because professors in this major are also in demand from the industry.
UCLA location is also expensive for housing, not too many people want to move there.</p>
<p>I am sorry that you feel threatened by the “redundant” majors at UCLA that are “wasting funding” (and taking spots?) in any engineering field.</p>
<p>I am assuming you feel this way because you are applying this year and are concerned about the competitive nature of admissions at UCLA. However I would ask you to be more respectful of other majors and the people who genuinely enjoy them. While it might not be your decision, you have to respect their choice.</p>
<p>@2016Candles </p>
<p>White chicks for me… </p>
<p>Even the most ordinary, average white girls look like Kate Upton to me. I don’t care if they have Professor Trelawney type hair. In fact, I had a crush on that bat-■■■■ crazy women ever since I first watched Prisoner of Azkaban in theaters. Her craziness turned into a fetish, and to this day, I prefer girls with a little crazy in them. It sounds exhilarating…</p>
<p>Getting back onto the thread’s topic. I agree that there are redundant majors. I think I saw linguistics and philosophy, linguistics and psychology, linguistics and computer science, etc. </p>
<p>What is the point? Just make one major linguistics and the other computer science. Simple. I wouldn’t be surprised to see thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of applicants trying to back door their way into a STEM major by applying for one of these majors only to find out it isn’t what they thought it’d be.</p>
<p>@CSB111 My point is that that expansion comes at a cost.</p>
<p>(Yes this is still more Berkeley - aka what happens when CS does have thousands of students.)</p>
<p>The L&S CS major has gotten harder to declare (3.0 tech GPA in pre-reqs, average GPA in some of those classes is below 3.0). Students who minor have almost no hope of getting into popular upper divs, since they don’t get the same priority as declared CS majors. Those who are in the program still don’t have it that great… the number of students outweighs what classes can accommodate. Security last Fall was actively trying to scare students away from the class, they lost a TA and needed to kick out 100+ students. CS189 (Machine Learning) kicked out students that didn’t have an A- or better in AI (upper div pre-req). CS169 (Software Engineering) last fall tried to accommodate 250 students (as opposed to 100 the previous semester) and it was a disaster.</p>
<p>Keep in mind that Berkeley classes are pretty big already. They have systems in place… Piazza is an online tool where students can ask/answer questions, many assignments are autograded and there are dedicated servers for that, they have classes to teach first time TAs what to do, etc. I don’t know if UCLA is equipped with those tools yet, but I’d say it’s pretty vital to how classes are run here.</p>
<p>A lot of classes don’t scale well, they can’t scale, they can’t take in another hundred students. The result is that students are unhappy, they can’t get their classes, classes get crazy enrollment requirements. And the classes are still huge. In a class of 100, the professor might know your name, maybe. In a class of 300? You may never talk to the professor, and you’ll deal much more with the GSIs. And the professors here are brilliant, I wish I had gotten to know more of them better. If classes have hundreds of students, you don’t get that attention anymore. They don’t grade your projects, they don’t do practice problems with you in section, and most of the class’s office hours are held by TAs. If the professor knows your name, chances are you’re either brilliant (whoa, ___ got 99% on the exam!) or you’re in trouble (possibly for cheating). That’s one of the things I missed about CC… the classes there were 20-30 students, and it was so much easier to get to know faculty.</p>
<p>So, if you choose to make that trade-off and have a couple thousand students in the CS program, it’s not perfect. If enrollment stays small those problems go away… students get that one-on-one attention, professors know their students, there aren’t space issues, and classes don’t collapse because they got too big too fast. Sure, small programs can’t accept as many students and that makes them more competitive, but small definitely has its advantages.</p>
<p>@BurntCorpse You see that problem anyways. Students apply to majors they don’t want with the intention of switching into more competitive STEM fields. Getting rid of majors won’t fix that problem, if anything it provides less flexible options for students.</p>
<p>A lot of schools have a lot of useless majors</p>
<p>Do your feelings towards these majors have anything to do with them being humanities?</p>
<p>I think @Cayton picked up on that too…</p>
<p>A lot of humanities haters @music1990.</p>
<p>@music1990 </p>
<p>Haters gonna hate</p>
<p>SHAKE IT OFF…
(OK, bad reference, Taylor Swift)</p>