Hi everyone, welcome to today's video. Don't mind this, it is just um a little
accessory that I have for today's video. so I really want to talk about my
experience at ucla, particularly with ucla engineering.
I have lots of things to cover, so let's go ahead and get started.
Okay I'm not gonna wear this the whole video so I'll just take it off for now.
I went to ucla, I graduated last year in a degree
of electrical engineering and i am here to tell you
all about it. I really want to talk about my experience,
especially as a transfer student and everything that I learned in my journey
to get this piece of paper. Okay, so where should we start.
Why did I choose ucla? Originally, when I was applying for schools I had it
in my mind that I really wanted to go to berkeley.
It was my childhood dream to go to uc berkeley.
I had told everyone far wide for a lot of my life that berkeley was
the school I wanted to go to. However, when application season came
around and I actually started doing my research
more in depth and after I got my acceptances to both
ucla and uc berkeley, I decided to go take a
trip to both schools. My trip to uc berkeley was
not great. Um I don't know, I just kind of felt like I wouldn't be happy there.
Um and really this is a big big personal reason
you know i'm a person that is just used to
being at home with family so having family close to me meant
a lot to me. My family is from san diego so
moving somewhere to the bay area... it just started to feel so much more real.
And then, I believe when I visited it was about finals week for them
so just seeing the stress that everyone was under
and um the atmosphere of the school imagining myself in that situation and
not really having the support of my family
and not being able to just make the quick drive down
to visit them if I ever needed anything I really just didn't feel like it would
be a great choice for me and secondly like I mentioned I was a
transfer student. When I went to visit berkeley they
didn't really have an event for transfer students like an open house
for transfer students. When I was admitted,
they had something like it, but it wasn't really an official
open house for transfer students and if there was I was never notified about it.
I just didn't really feel welcomed by the school like I did with ucla.
So now let's talk about ucla. Ucla 100% made me feel so so welcome from the very
beginning. We had an open house for transfer
students where we got to specifically
meet and talk to advisors, different professors, different people that are
involved in the actual school of engineering,
and then even smaller than that with your actual major,
and also on top of all this ucla has a program called
CEED. CEED was an amazing program and me being a first generation
immigrant student and also a woman of color in engineering I
was really grateful for this program because
I you know finally felt like I had a group of people that were sort of
in the same boat as me. People who had similar experiences growing up,
who are also first generation, who are also
you know battling with a lot of external factors
when it comes to coming to school, and trying to break those
generational cycles. So all of that really just combined and
I felt so welcomed there. I felt happy when I was on campus. The campus is
not only beautiful, but it also just has this
warmth to it um and so I decided even though I had said
for a very large part of my life that i wanted to go to berkeley, that I
was going to go to ucla. But, it wasn't necessarily
an easy transition for me. I actually struggled quite a bit.
When I transferred, I came from a semester school.
The school that I went to was in San Diego and
you know back in high school, it was semesters. My community college was
semesters, so switching over to a school
that is of you know very high academic rigor such as ucla, and then on top of
that having to transition onto the quarter
system (which is only ten weeks) it was very very difficult. I would say
it's one of the most difficult things I had to do in my academic journey.
I remember the first couple classes that I took
were just... I was struggling so much and not only that but it also kind of
felt like everyone already knew each other,
everyone already had their friend groups, and they had their study groups.
So coming in as a transfer student can be a little bit
difficult in that way. Where you are not only struggling to adapt to this
new environment that you're in, you're also struggling to adapt to
a new social environment, um trying to break into
different study groups that have been long established, perhaps since those
students were freshmen. So it was definitely a lot of things
to have to deal with all at once. It can be really overwhelming,
so having a support group that you can rely on
from the beginning... trying to find that and trying to foster that
is extremely important. Um I'm very grateful,
like I said, for CEED because in CEED, I was able to meet
other transfer students and other students that were in my same
you know junior level that came in when they were freshmen. So they're a little
bit more experienced about the way that it works so that was really
really helpful for me, but they weren't always in my classes. So
sometimes I did have to step a little bit out of my comfort zone
and talk to other people who I ,you know, clearly didn't know
and try to form these study groups for myself.
Once I started to do that and I started to break out of my shell a little bit
and feel a little more comfortable with the environment
and with the rigor of the course load, then I really started to feel like
you know I was finally getting the hang of it. But, it did take
a while. Now, something else I want to mention
is in ucla engineering there are a lot of classes that you need
to take and if you actually do the math for all the
classes that you need to take with a basic full course load
of you know your 12 units it is very likely that you're not going
to finish in four years... because there are just they're just so
many classes that you need to take. Um so I did end up taking three years.
I transferred in and then I did three years and it's also very common
for people who come in as freshmen to take five years, so this is something
that I actually really recommend that you consider if you are coming in
new to ucla I think that it was very important for me
to take the three years instead of the two
for a lot of different reasons. One of them being you know it's a period of
transition and it's already going to be difficult
to try to get settled in and then on top of that trying to manage
things like internships which are very important if you're an engineering
student, um clubs, a social life,
a you know personal life of any sort, with your academics so I 100% recommend
that you consider adding on that extra year
if your finances allow it. Now let's talk about how i paid for
school. I had two scholarships that helped me
pay for my education. One of them was the Jack Kent Cooke
scholarship. I had the undergraduate transfer scholarship
and this helped me pay for... the scholarship covers up to $40,000 a
year, but it's not limited to tuition, you can
also apply it towards living expenses like rent and bills.
Then on top of that I was also a ucla Regents
Scholar which is amazing and I am really grateful for that.
So I was able to graduate completely debt free.
Don't be scared of applying to those really big name scholarships.
I was being discouraged at the time from applying to the Jack Kent Cooke
scholarship. Um you know I was told things like only
80 people in the whole country get it, it's really not worth the time, it's not
worth investing yourself into this, it's very
rare, but I was selected and it was such an amazing thing and
you know I was able to graduate without any debt at all whatsoever. I had my
tuition covered, I had my rent covered, I had my books covered,
um they even gave me a laptop, so apply to those opportunities even if you
feel like you know you won't get it or like
it's very very unlikely. I went for it and I got it
so absolutely recommend. So the last thing that I want to talk about
is... well two things, one the environment. What is it actually
like to be at ucla and two, the academics because that is a very
important part. So number one, the environment at ucla.
Ucla is such a beautiful campus and it also feels so open um,
but engineering is very time consuming so definitely don't spread yourself too
thin. There are so many different clubs and organizations
and classes that you can take outside of your academics
so it can be easy to try to do it all so definitely be careful
when it comes to that. Absolutely get involved with the campus because there's
anything that you can imagine at ucla and there are so many different groups
just ready to welcome you in, but it's really important that you make
sure that you take care of your academics
first because as engineers you already know
you are not going to be left with much time. Lastly, the academics.
Hmm what do I say about this. Okay so as we know ucla is a
research institution so it is very very well known for its research labs which
are absolutely amazing. Especially if you're considering grad
school, it is really important that you start getting involved with research
opportunities as an undergrad. I was able to be part of a research lab
and it was a really great experience. However, I always knew that I wanted to
go into industry. So, I think that there is a big
disconnect right now with students wanting to do industry
afterward and the instruction that we are
receiving. Not in a bad way, but it is very theoretical and very
um research focused. Everything that we're learning
you know it's extreme theory and huge amounts of math which is
awesome i love math and it's beautiful but I do wish there was also a a little
bit more of that applied component of you know for example
designing your own circuit. You learn how to
solve the equations and solve for the different
things in a circuit that is being presented to you
but you're not really taught how to design one yourself for a specific
function or how to protect it from different cases like
over voltage or things like that you're also not really taught how to use
professional lab equipment. So those are some of the things that I
wish were a little bit more common in electrical engineering at
ucla. But again you know having that big
research background does help because anything that
gets thrown into you later on it's very easy for you to figure it out and
learn new things. The rigor at ucla is very well known it is an extremely
rigorous program you are going to learn so much. You're going to learn things
that you didn't even think you were capable
of learning, you know you're going to write math equations
that you never imagined you would be able to solve,
and it's such a beautiful thing, however because ucla is a research institution a
lot of the professors are researchers first and lecturers
second. So, that means that you really have to be
careful with which professors you are choosing for your classes
because some of them you know research is their priority and lecturing is just
not and for me it's really important to have
a professor who is really passionate about
teaching us and not so much a professor who is just
somebody you know trying to get a side job done
which unfortunately does happen. However, this happens at
many other universities. There are resources like bruinwalk.com where you
can go and research your professors, look at the
ratings, this is kind of like rate my professor
but for ucla, and make a plan for yourself. I also
would really like to recommend that you speak with the current students
in the program and really get to know who the
professors are. Who the ones that are worth taking
are and who are the ones that you should avoid.
So overall I would say that while I was there
I experienced some of the you know darkest times of my life in
terms of just how overwhelmed I felt, how stressed I felt, how overworked,
burned out, under every kind of pressure you can imagine, but now,
looking back, it also made me such a strong
person and it made me a person who is now
essentially capable of overcoming any challenge
in the workplace. That is why I now do the work that I do
in trying to talk to all of you guys and make sure that
you know exactly how to navigate those situations because it really was a lot
of trial and error for me, but if I can avoid that for somebody
else then by all means I am going to do it. So
that concludes this video there are so many more things that I could talk about.
If you have any questions make sure you leave them down in the comment section. I
would love to answer them. If you are planning on going to ucla,
are already going to ucla, or just really want to go to ucla, let me
know(: and thank you so much for watching my
video!