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!
