Concept

University of California, Los Angeles

Overview

The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school, then known as the southern branch of the California State Normal School, which later evolved into San José State University. The branch was transferred to the University of California to become the Southern Branch of the University of California in 1919, making it the second-oldest of the 10-campus University of California system after the University of California, Berkeley.

UCLA offers 337 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in a range of disciplines, enrolling about 31,600 undergraduate and 14,300 graduate and professional students annually. It received 174,914 undergraduate applications for Fall 2022, including transfers, the most of any university in the United States. The university is organized into the College of Letters and Science and twelve professional schools. Six of the schools offer undergraduate degree programs: Arts and Architecture, Engineering and Applied Science, Music, Nursing, Public Affairs, and Theater, Film and Television. Three others are graduate-level professional health science schools: Medicine, Dentistry, and Public Health. Its three remaining schools are Education & Information Studies, Management and Law.

UCLA student-athletes compete as the Bruins in the Big Ten Conference. They won 126 NCAA team championships while in the Big Ten and the Pac-12 Conference, second only to Stanford University's 128 team titles. 436 Bruins have made Olympic teams, winning 284 Olympic medals: 141 gold, 74 silver and 69 bronze. UCLA has been represented in every Olympics since the university's founding (except in 1924) and has had a gold medalist in every Olympics in which the U.S. has participated since 1932.

As of October 2025, 19 Nobel laureates, 11 Rhodes scholars, 10 astronauts, 3 Turing Award winners, 2 Dan David Prize winners, 2 chief scientists of the U.S. Air Force, 1 Pritzker Prize winner, 7 Pulitzer Prize winners, 2 U.S. poet laureates, 1 Gauss prize winner, and 1 Fields Medalist have been affiliated with it as faculty, researchers and alumni. As of April 2025, 61 associated faculty members have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, 17 to the American Philosophical Society, 34 to the National Academy of Engineering, 49 to the National Academy of Medicine, 29 to the National Academy of Inventors, and 71 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

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This would not matter so much if it affected only those who have no genuine intellectual interests. But unfortunately it affects most those whose intellectual interests are strongest, since it is upon them that the pressure of examinations falls with most severity. To them most, but to all in some degree, education appears as a means of acquiring superiority over others; it is infected through and through with…
Bertrand Russell, Why Men Fight
The author is tied to University of California, Los Angeles in the knowledge graph.
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Such arguments make a great appeal to what are called ``practical'' men, and the answers to them are of a sort which it is difficult to render widely convincing. Revolt against the evils of competition is, however, part of the very essence of the Socialist's protest against the existing order, and on this ground, if on no other, those who favor Socialism may be summoned to look…
Bertrand Russell, Proposed Roads to Freedom
States what University of California, Los Angeles is; the author is tied to University of California, Los Angeles in the knowledge graph.
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The same artificial means which have been used to produce a competition in learning, may be equally successful in restoring agriculture to its primary dignity in the eyes of men. It is a science of the very first order. It counts among its handmaids the most respectable sciences, such as Chemistry, Natural Philosophy, Mechanics, Mathematics generally, Natural History, Botany. In every College and University, a…
Thomas Jefferson, Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies, From the Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 4
Close in meaning to University of California, Los Angeles; the term itself is not named.
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University of California, Los Angeles

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