Photo: Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0
United States · Los Angeles, California
University of California, Los Angeles
Sun, the Pacific and Hollywood next door at America's most applied-to university
- QS World Ranking 2026
- #46
- Founded
- 1919
- Students
- 47,000
- Bachelor's degree
- 4 years
- Acceptance rate
- ~11%
- Typical IB offer
- 38–42
- Language of instruction
- English
Worth knowing
On 29 October 1969 a student in Boelter Hall sent the first message on ARPANET, the ancestor of the internet, to Stanford. He tried to type LOGIN, the system crashed after two characters, so the first word ever sent across a network was LO. Room 3420 is now a small museum.
How hard is it to get in, and why
UCLA receives more first-year applications than any university in the US, well over 150,000, and admitted roughly 11% for fall 2026. Samueli Engineering, computer science, nursing and the film school run far below that. The UC system is test-blind, so grades, course rigour and four Personal Insight Questions decide everything; there are no interviews and no recommendation letters. Internationals are held to the same standard as Californians but receive no financial aid.
What it costs
Tuition
$55k–56k per year
Non-resident tuition for 2026–27 is $54,858 (UC tuition plus the $39,270 supplement) with about $842 in campus fees on top; figures stay provisional until the Regents approve them.
Living costs
$25k–30k per year
Scholarships and financial aid
None to speak of: the UC system provides no need-based aid to international students, and UCLA's few merit scholarships are mostly reserved for US residents. Plan on roughly $85,000 a year and be ready to document it for the visa.
How to apply
One UC Application for all nine UC campuses, filed between 1 October and 30 November; nothing is accepted after the deadline. You apply to a college and, for Engineering, directly to a major; Theater, Film and Television and Arts and Architecture require a supplemental portfolio. Four Personal Insight Questions of 350 words each, chosen from eight, replace the essay. No recommendation letters, no interviews, and SAT/ACT scores are not considered. Decisions are released in late March.
Official websiteWhat makes it special
- A 419-acre campus in Westwood: Royce Hall and Powell Library in Romanesque brick, Santa Monica beach 8 km away, and a four-year housing guarantee for entering first-years.
- The Bruins have won more than 120 NCAA team championships, more than any other university; John Wooden's basketball team took ten national titles in twelve years.
- The School of Theater, Film and Television, alma mater of Francis Ford Coppola, sits in the same city as the studios; applicants submit a separate creative supplement.
- The David Geffen School of Medicine and Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center rank among the top hospitals in the US, and undergraduates can join their research labs.
- The rivalry with USC divides Los Angeles every November; the Bruin Bear statue is boarded up before the game to stop Trojan vandals, and students avoid touching the Inverted Fountain until graduation.
- Los Angeles is spread out and car-centred, but the Metro D Line extension will reach Westwood in 2027, and the campus is a 20-minute bus ride from Beverly Hills and Culver City studios.
About studying in United States
Four-year degrees and holistic admissions: universities read essays, recommendations and a record of what you have built or led, not only grades. Applications go through the Common App by early November (early rounds) or early January; most top universities have brought back SAT or ACT scores. Sticker prices are the highest in the world, but Harvard, MIT, Yale, Princeton and a few others admit international students without looking at family income and then cover the full demonstrated need.
Teaching staff
Who runs the university, who teaches, and how lessons actually work.
- Faculty members
- ~5 460
- Undergraduates
- ~33 000
- Countries represented
- 107
UCLA employs about 5,460 faculty and teaches roughly 33,000 undergraduates and 13,600 graduate students, drawn from 107 countries. The chancellor heads twelve schools and colleges, of which the College of Letters and Science alone holds about 25,500 undergraduates; the professional schools include the David Geffen School of Medicine, the Samueli School of Engineering, the Anderson School of Management, the School of Law, the Fielding School of Public Health and the School of Theater, Film and Television.
Because UCLA is a large public university, the introductory courses are taught as lectures with discussion sections led by teaching assistants, and the way in to real research is to apply for it. The Undergraduate Research Center runs programmes such as the Student Research Program and summer research scholarships; students working in a laboratory usually earn course credit for it. Most of the campus operates on a ten-week quarter system rather than semesters, which means three sets of final examinations a year and courses that move fast.
The School of Theater, Film and Television is the part of UCLA the world knows best: it admits a small fraction of its film applicants, and its alumni include Francis Ford Coppola and Alexander Payne. The sciences are equally strong in a quieter way. Andrea Ghez tracked stars around the centre of the Milky Way from UCLA for a quarter of a century and won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics for proving there is a black hole there. Terence Tao became a full professor of mathematics at twenty-four, the youngest in UCLA's history, and won the Fields Medal in 2006.
Teachers worth knowing
1994–nowAndrea Ghez
Lauren B. Leichtman and Arthur E. Levine Chair in Astrophysics, Department of Physics and Astronomy
- Teaches
- Astrophysics and the Galactic Centre · High-resolution imaging
- Experience
- At UCLA since 1994; shared the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics for the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way.
As a scientist, make sure students become critical thinkers.
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1996–nowTerence Tao
James and Carol Collins Professor of Mathematics
- Teaches
- Harmonic analysis and number theory · Combinatorics
- Experience
- At UCLA since 1996; full professor at twenty-four, the youngest in the university's history, and Fields Medallist in 2006.
Progress is obtained naturally and cumulatively as a consequence of hard work, directed by intuition, literature, and a bit of luck.
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1970–nowJudea Pearl
Professor of Computer Science and Statistics, Director of the Cognitive Systems Laboratory
- Teaches
- Causal inference · Probabilistic reasoning and Bayesian networks
- Experience
- At UCLA since 1970; won the 2011 Turing Award for the probabilistic and causal foundations of artificial intelligence.
You cannot answer a question that you cannot ask, and you cannot ask a question that you have no words for.
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The campus in photographs
Photographs come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences; the author and licence are shown on each image.
People who studied or taught here
Jackie RobinsonBaseball player who broke the colour barrier in American professional sport
Left without a degree · 1939–1941
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