University of California, Los Angeles

Overview

Founded in 1919, the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public research university that is touted to be among the best in the world. At the heart of the UCLA mission are education, research, and service. The university prides itself on being dedicated to the creation, distribution, preservation, and application of knowledge for the good of society.

UCLA has expansive offerings for its undergraduate, graduate, and continuing education programs. It houses about 100 academic departments that offer over 100 majors taught in multiple languages. For undergraduates, the most sought-after majors are economics, biology, psychology, psychobiology, and political science.

On the other hand, its continuing education institution, UCLA Extension, offers a wide array of courses and certificate programs. Students can choose from various fields of study from engineering to business and management to arts and design. These programs help build new skills or advance their careers more quickly than traditional undergraduate courses. Rounding up its offerings are its graduate school programs. Though UCLA graduate schools offer fewer courses, they are nonetheless ranked as among the best in the United States.

UCLA was founded by educator Ernest Carroll Moore and journalist Edward Dickson. The university’s long and storied past includes innovations and breakthroughs that put it at the forefront of history. Notable ones include the diagnosis of the first case of AIDS and the development of the mathematical models for the wide-area network that will, later on, become the foundation for the Internet.

UCLA is home to distinguished personalities that have made their mark in film, politics, technology, and various other fields. One of these is Francis Ford Coppola, director of the iconic trilogy, The Godfather, who earned his Master of Fine Art in Film from UCLA. There’s also Tom Bradley, who studied at UCLA under an athletic scholarship and went on to become the first African-American mayor of Los Angeles.

As an institution, UCLA also has its fair share of distinctions. The university-affiliated medical health center UCLA Health is considered as one of the best hospitals in LA and in the U.S. The school itself has Nobel Prize winners among its faculty, alumni, and researchers. Moreover, technological innovations at the university have spurred numerous inventions and companies.

UCLA continues to rise to the challenge of the 2020 pandemic. Currently, UCLA is offering remote learning and limited in-person and hybrid courses in the wake of pandemic-related cost reductions. They have also established resources to promote equity and fighting racial discrimination and bias.

You can also learn more about the educational performance of University of California, Los Angeles in our ranking of US universities & colleges.