The Beach (need I say more?)

Introduction
It’s southern California you know so you’ve got the beach, you have the weather.
It’s big but you feel like you know almost everyone. You see someone everywhere you go.

Campus Life and Social Life
I’d say most UCLA students are involved in extra-curricular activities, some type of student group, mainly because there are so many. If you are interested in anything at all you can find a student group with other people who are interested as well. You can try the club sports. There are the recreational activities, through the Wooden Center. There are all other kinds of student groups such as the Bruin Republican, Bruin Democrats. CALPERG which is a community service student group. I would say that half this campus is extremely politically active and then the other half is kind of like whatever about politics. I’d say there definitely is a liberal slant at this school. There is a contingent of conservatives, like I said there is a Bruin republicans student group, but they’re largely outnumbered. Academics
As an undergraduate in economics I think the classes are really good in terms of material. The professors, they’re weeder professors. Meaning they’re professors determined to work you hard and try and bore you kind of bore you because they don’t want that many people in the business/econ dept. You have to kind of pull through those people, but when you get to the upper division classes, you can start to choose more of your subject. And since you can choose your own subject, it’s more interesting to you and you’ll get a professor who actually cares about that subject. As you become a junior/senior year and get into those upper division classes it becomes a much better education. I’ve actually been pretty impressed with the average student in terms of their intelligence.

Student Body
The dorms provide a great way to meet people and then I’d definitely say getting involved in some sort of student group is the best way to meet people. For me that was Greek life. Seriously I can’t walk to class without seeing one of my friends and it just makes it feel a lot better because you don’t feel lost in such a large university. I originally decided to join a fraternity because they had free food. I ended up keeping with the fraternity and staying with it because I just meet a bunch of guys who I would want to hang out with. It’s an outlet for sports and also for social events obviously. It also provided a way to get philanthropy. Like the community service projects that they do.

In Closing...
Coming from Northern California, I was expecting people to be obsessed with looks, kind of the OC type thing, find a Barbie every time you look around and then find the country club guy every other corner. But actually I was quite impressed, everyone’s pretty individual here. There’s some place where you’ll find a large group of people who look the same, but on average I’d say everyone’s pretty individualistic.