University of California-Los Angeles Top Questions

My most favorite class is my Honors Collegium seminar with Professor Von Blum. He knows my name, but most professors don't know my name simply because of the size of most classes.

Some of the classes are pretty big..favorite class would have to be MAE 150A...students study pretty often but not so much that it takes up all their time...just gotta manage time well. Intellectual conversations...sure. Students are pretty competitive, but who isn't? Everyone wants to do well. Don't really spend time outside engineering with professors.. Academic requirement? Kind of geared towards both getting a job and theoretical learning for its own sake...way too many upper division requirements though.

You have to admit professors do not know your name in your beginning courses; but only if you sit there and do nothing. If you are involved in your academics and want the professor to know your name, he will, all you have to do is go to office hours, get some extra help. Use your professors not only as academic tools but as mentors as well. I am actually a GLOBAL STUDIES major and Geography major but I couldn't pick that from the list I had on this survey. It's awesome, the departement is great. THe international burkle institue is world renown and one of its former fellows is General Wesley Clark, former NATO supreme commander of allied foces in Europe!

Nope my professors dont' know my name. It's kinda sad really, but I never have the bravery to go into office hours and introduce myself. It's nerve wracking to go into office hours. And yes, students are freaking insanely competitive here at this school - it borders on the ridiculous side. Biology is by far the chillest major but a lot of the snotty pre meds look down on it because it's "easier" than other things like Phy Sci or MCDB, but hey, I like animals and don't like narrowing my focus to something that I'll probably be studying when I'm in medical school.

the classes here are typically huge lecture halls but who cares really? academics rests in the hands of the student and if they want to be best friends with the prof, that is do-able, with office hours and the like. students here can be very competitive but it is usually easy to find help in class, and most people are laidback. class participation is not common but also not rare, it depends on the prof. i am a sociology major so my field of study involves how society works and how people interact, therefore a lot of the soc professors are very interactive and good communicators. ucla has a GE program that forces you to take a bunch of classes you otherwise wouldnt take, its painful at times but is a necessary evil that we all will someday appreciate. ucla has a lot of features that prep us for the real world as well, like career center, job fairs, internship fairs, and simply being in the los angeles area helps too.

Professors do not know my name because the classes are huge and I don't attend office hours (because I don't feel I need to). My favorite class was physics because it explained the world to me in a scientific manner. I learned why things work the way they do. It seems applicable in the real world as well, not just for a career in physics. The academic requirements for my actual major are fine, but I don't like having to take so many General Education requirements. Why can't they have a class on football? After all, they offer a lot of music history classes and movie classes, but no sport ones. Sports classes could include a lot of academic information: for instance, how sporting events have influenced history, strategies of playing the game, scouting, the physics of throwing a ball, etc.

In my lower division courses, none of my professors knew my name. I did have some good relationships with Teaching Assistants and now that I am starting to take upper division classes in an unimpacted major (linguistics), my professors actually know who I am and notice whether I am in class or not.

This is a tough subject for me to write about, because I can't quite tell if I have had an uncommonly poor experience with professors, or if everyone else is just too damn eager to succeed that they don't stop to ask why the hell they can't understand a damn thing they're being told. No one seems to be vocal as me about their dissatisfaction with the faculty, yet if you were to ask someone why they were struggling in their classes, that person would be likely to say that it is because their professor did an extremely poor job explaining it. You see, the greatest problem I have found with the professors is that, while they are EXTREMELY intelligent and competent people, they are interested primarily in the research being funded by the school, and have neither passion for teaching, nor the ability to do it. That leaves the TA's, who are often more interested in student learning, but who almost always use a very different method of explaning material than the professor. In fact, I have had a few TA's who don't even attend lecture. They merely take the topic being covered and find they quickest way to explain it to their students, who then often find themselves confused not only by the material itself, but also by the way in which they ought to go about handling it. There's also another big problem I've encountered with TA's (mainly in math and science courses), and this is kind of a touchy subject, so I'll do my best to be P.C. The majority of my TA's have been foreign. Okay, no problem. However, about half of these foreign TA's had such a poor grasp on the English language that they had trouble grasping some concepts (such as those in word problems), so students would have to explain them. Needless to say, this is not how the limited time of a discussion should be spent. And of course, many of these TA's had accents so thick that they would have to be asked to repeatedly repeat things so that students would understand. Honestly, I don't know what could be done about this problem, since someone should no be denied a position because of his or her background. Still, though, I think it does need to be acknowldged as a problem.

Some professors know me by name. Obviously, my fist 2 years it was rare that a professor would know me personally. Now that I am taking smaller classes, and the nature of the classes I take ( a lot based on discussions and interactions and opinions) you get to connect with your professors more. My favorite professors are either Getty or Lohmann. Getty teaches Soviet history and Lohmann teaches poli-sci with an emphasis on ethics. They both seemed genuinely interested in student learning over grades and had plenty of on-the field accounts to spice up lectures. Getty had incredible stories about times he met important players like Gorbachev and was easily the best lecturer ive ever had- he was realy old school. Lohmann is a gem- she is out of her mind and is obsessed with student interaction above all else. Some people can be annoyed by her tangents, but Im down. She really challenges you and grades are the last thing she worries about. I think her class is how university education should be. My least favority courses are ones where it is obvious that the teachers dont want to be there. A lot of teachers are experts in their fields and do research, and they just dont seem to give effort to class. Jacoby Russel comes to mind...Students study a lot, but my major is unique in the sense that it is sorta easy to bullshit and not dso all the assigned reading. Oppose to something like physics, where I image it is a lot more studying. Intellectual conversations are common outside of class and sometimes creep into parties, but it is more about praising or talking shit about progfessors. I am a double major (history/polsci) and enjoy both. Like I said, UCLA is huge and there are good professors and bad ones, finding and connecting with the good ones is key. The academic requirements are really that bad (but everyone complains about them). For me, I had no idea what I really wanted to study, so why not take a Bullshit science class???? They are for the most part easy and you meet people. Yeh, they are ultimately useless, but I guess I know about dinasours and nutrition now?? I think whether UCLA is geared towards getting a job or learning depends on the major and classes you take. History majors, for the most part, are interested in history and not necessarily concerned with a job. Obviously, Law school is emphasized in polisci courses, but it really depends on the professor.

If you're in a small class, professors know your name, otherwise they won't. TA's will try to get to know you because you are in a smalelr class. My favorite class will probably have to be Life Science 15, and my least Computer Science 31. Students study when they need to study - for midterms, quizzes, homework, finals. Class participation is more common in smaller classrooms, and UCLA students definitely have intellectual conversations outside of class. Students are quite competitive, especially in my department. THe most unique class I've taken is Arts and Architecture. My major consists of 300 undergraduates, so there are less than 100 people per class, which means you can make strong connections with your peers. I spend time with some professors outside of class, such as my research professor - but mostly because I work with her. UCLA gears their education both on getting a job and learning for your own sake, because they teach what you want to know and what you should know.