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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My experience is that the study body segregates based on identity so people hang out with people like themselves.  It's not a cohesive community.[/quote]

I think this is a weird comment to make about UCLA specifically because I've never been in a community where this isn't the case (my college, my jobs, church, my kids' schools, etc).  It's human nature for people to segregate based on identity. It is very hard if not impossible to get authentic mixing of cultures and races on any sort of large scale.

[/quote]
I'd attended a smaller university before UCLA and students of all backgrounds joined groups and socialized based on interests.  There were dance groups, outdoors clubs, chess clubs, triathlon clubs, etc.  At UCLA, every group started with identity and not interests.  Even lab partners wouldn't speak with each other if they weren't of the same background.  I found it super weird.

Even student elections were all about getting other students of your religion/culture/race/heritage to turn out to vote for the candidate of the same background to push resources towards those students groups.  It was super divisive.  [/quote]

Were you a transfer to UCLA? How recently did you attend? [/quote]
I was a graduate student.  My experience is that UCLA undergrads had never had another college experience and would accept everything as normal. They didn't question that professors were unavailable, there was zero advising or that many classes were impossible to get into.  They also didn't question things like shortages of lab supplies. I had another college experience to compare to and I was routinely astounded what UCLA students accepted as normal.[/quote]
UCLA consistently rates extremely high in student satisfaction, retention, etc. compared to the kind of schools that PP seemingly believes provide more resources. And many Bruins, myself included, study abroad or were transfers and thus do have some basis for comparison. There's a large discrepancy between the online kvetching about UCLA (large classes, scheduling, etc.) and the actual student experience, which is generally very positive.

That said, the UCLA grad students in my department seemed miserable. They convinced me not to seek a career in academia. Speaking of which, in the history of DCUM, has a grad student ever given a favorable review of the undergraduate experience at their school? It doesn't seem like it. [/quote]
That's some strong Kool aid.  Study abroad really provides no perspective and transfers are mostly from the California CC system with its own issues.  California weather and the UCLA campus are absolutely beautiful, so I'm not surprised that students are happy.  They also are mostly from California and tend to be less critical than their East Coast counterparts.

I had a pretty broad group of friends at UCLA, including my now husband in a different department, and we were all pretty astounded at a lot of the stuff that seemed normal to UCLA undergrads.  We were from RPI, Rice, Carnegie Melon, MIT, William and Mary, NYU, Berkeley, BYU, U of Arizona, UT Austin, Loyola Marymount , etc.  A pretty broad cross section, but all really surprised with what we saw at UCLA with poor teaching and poor treatment of undergrads.[/quote]
Check your own kool-aid consumption, sister. Do you really believe that your observations of the UCLA undergrad experience as a grad student are superior to that of actual UCLA undergrads? (Don't those happy, satisfied undergrads know that they should be unhappy and dissatisfied!) Why does study abroad not provide perspective? And what about transfer students? At least those students are comparing apples to apples--two sets of undergraduate experiences. And did you really poll all the grad students at the schools you mentioned about the undergrad experience? Because that doesn't sound credible. [b](It's not like Berkeley, Texas, or UA offer a superior undergrad experience.)[/b] At a minimum, it sounds like a bizarre use of your time.

Again, grad student observations of the undergraduate experience are pretty much never favorable on DCUM and shouldn't be given credence above that of actual undergrads. [/quote]
I'm not judging the undergrad experience or saying that UCLA undergrads are unhappy.

I taught undergrads for 5 years while there and I do very much judge the quality of instruction. You make a huge assumption that it's just as bad elsewhere, but we had many conversations about the stuff we saw and it isn't like that elsewhere.  I didn't poll other grad students, but we did talk to each other daily for 5 years. UCLA was a hot mess for many reasons.

Friend: Is your lab section all 5th years?
Me: Yeah, apparently it's one of the impacted courses so they've been waiting to take it for years.  I even have a couple of 6th years.
Friend:  Yeah, they're all having trouble.  I think it's because they took the class as first or second years and don't remember it.
Me:  I don't think it's just that.  The prof told me that they restructured the curriculum after they took 30B so many have never seen this content.  We're supposed to teach the lab part, but the theory is taught in the class. 
Friend:  That can't be right.  They have to have learned [important subject] to take this lab.
Me: Yeah, it used to be part of 30C, but they moved it to 30B, so students who'd already taken 30B just missed it.  
Another Friend: I heard that they changed it because Prof X who usually teaches 30C was out one of those quarters so Prof Y taught it.  But he'd never taught 30C before and don't want to bothered write a course, so he just taught 30B content to a 30C class.  But those students took 30B twice and never took 30C.  Then they made the swap official to try to cover the content.
Friend: That explains a lot.  I keep getting completely blank stares when I mention [important subject] in my lab section.
Me: But that's a crazy order to teach those subjects.  They need to learn [other things] before they're taught [important subject].
Another friend:  Yeah, I TAd 30B last semester and they didn't understand it at all.  It's totally taught out of order.  
(Entire lunch table representing many undergrad schools agrees the UCLA curriculum is taught in a crazy order and students are not prepared for the lab class and have big holes in core content.)

Rinse and repeat for many, many topics over 5 years.[/quote]

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