At a Glance
UCLA admits 9.4% of applicants.
What You'll Actually Pay
See what families at different income levels actually pay after aid.
What families actually pay, by income level
After grants and scholarships. Before loans. Public school prices shown at in-state rates.
Source: College Scorecard / IPEDS, 2024-25
Where the Sticker Price Goes
Based on average need-based grant. Actual cost varies by family income — see chart above.
Shown at in-state rates.
Debt at Graduation
44.4%
receive need-based grant aid
$21,116
average debt at graduation
UCLA graduates carry an average of $21,116 in debt.
Merit Aid
1,930
students received merit aid
$7,401
average merit award
Getting In
UCLA admits 9.4% of applicants.
This school reports SAT section scores but leaves the composite range blank, so there is no mid-50% band to chart.
ACT composite range not reported by this school.
What They Value
Academic
Nonacademic
University of California, Los Angeles rates your personal essay as Very Important — equal weight to your GPA. Don't underestimate it. Demonstrated interest is Not Considered here — campus visits and emails to admissions won't affect your odds.
Student Life
46.2% of UCLA classes have fewer than 20 students.
Share of undergraduate class sections at each size, from CDS Section I-3. More red = more large lectures.
At UCLA, 46.2% of your classes will have fewer than 20 students.
Class size data reflects all undergraduate sections including labs, seminars, and lectures. Large research universities often have smaller upper-division and graduate-level sections that improve the overall distribution. First and second-year students typically experience larger classes than these averages suggest.
Source: Common Data Set 2025–26, Section I-3 (class sizes)
20:1
student:faculty ratio
Campus Life
Live on campus
41.8%
Who Attends
Racial and ethnic breakdown of enrolled undergraduates, as reported in each school's Common Data Set. "Unknown / Other" includes students who did not report or selected "other."
UCLA's student body is 22.7% white.
Popular Majors
Will They Graduate?
UCLA graduates 86.1% of students in 4 years.
Graduating late means paying for extra semesters. The 6-year rate tells you who eventually finishes — the 4-year rate tells you what it actually costs.
UCLA graduates 86.1% of students in 4 years.
What finishing late actually costs
Based on each school's published cost of attendance. Public school costs shown at in-state rates.
UCLA
86.1%
4-yr grad rate
Most finish on time
* In-state cost of attendance. Out-of-state students pay significantly more.
Graduation rate data from Common Data Set 2025–26, Fall 2018 cohort (most recent available). 4-year rate = students completing in 4 years or less. 6-year rate = students completing within 6 years.
92.8%
Overall 6-yr rate
89.8%
Pell recipient rate
There's a 3 point gap between overall and Pell Grant graduation rates. Worth asking the school about support resources.
Freshman Retention
97%
97% of first-year students return for sophomore year.
City & Culture
Beyond the data — what it's actually like to spend four years in Los Angeles.
Westwood is a compact, walkable pocket of Los Angeles wrapped around the campus, with Beverly Hills on one side and Santa Monica and the ocean about fifteen minutes west. The campus itself is dense and self-contained — 419 acres for 33,534 undergraduates, the smallest campus in the UC system — so it feels more like a city block than a landscape. Everything beyond Westwood needs a plan: LA is spread out, traffic is the local currency, and the Metro D Line extension now reaching the campus is the first real alternative to driving. Rent in this part of the city is among the highest in the country.
Notable Alumni
Ralph Bunche
Won the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize for mediating the 1949 Armistice Agreements, the first Black American to receive it. He graduated here in 1927 in political science, summa cum laude and valedictorian of his class.
Class of 1927
Jackie Robinson
Broke Major League Baseball's colour line in 1947. He was UCLA's first athlete to letter in four sports — baseball, basketball, football and track — and left in spring 1941 just short of the degree to take a job with the National Youth Administration.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
The NBA's scoring leader for nearly four decades and a six-time champion. He played here from 1966 to 1969, winning three consecutive national titles, and took a history degree.
Class of 1969
Francis Ford Coppola
Directed The Godfather and Apocalypse Now. He took an MFA in film here, at a school that has since become one of the main pipelines into the industry sitting a few miles away.
Class of 1967
Alumni selected for name recognition and range of fields. Not from the Common Data Set.
The City
Major city
Los Angeles, CA
Best For
Traditions
The Victory Bell
The rivalry game against USC has been played since 1929, and the winner keeps a 295-pound locomotive bell that was stolen, hidden and fought over for years before the two student bodies agreed to make it the trophy in 1942.
Beat 'SC Week and the bonfire
The week before the USC game turns into a run of campus events, with Bruin Bear wrapped for protection and a rally that has been part of the calendar for generations.
Pauley Pavilion
The basketball arena where John Wooden's teams won ten national championships in twelve years, still the standard against which college basketball dynasties are measured.
Undie Run
A student-run midnight run through campus on the Wednesday of finals week, now organised with charity clothing donations attached.
Weekend Escapes
Within driving distance from Los Angeles
Santa Monica and the beaches
About 15 minutesThe nearest genuine escape from campus, reachable by bus, and the reason a surfboard is a plausible dorm-room object here.
Santa Monica Mountains and Malibu
About 30 minutesTrails, canyon roads and coastline directly north-west of the campus for a day out of the city.
Joshua Tree National Park
About 2.5 hoursDesert hiking and climbing, and the standard long-weekend trip for students with a car.
San Diego
About 2.5 hoursBeaches and a different city, close enough for a weekend without flying.
Getting There & Game Days
Nearest airport
Los Angeles International (LAX)
About 30 minutes from campus
Flies international — you can start a trip abroad from here.
Pro sports nearby
- Los Angeles Dodgers MLB
- Los Angeles Lakers NBA
- Los Angeles Rams NFL
- Los Angeles Kings NHL
Career Proximity
UCLA sits inside the second-largest metropolitan economy in the United States, with entertainment, health care and aerospace employers within a short drive and a teaching hospital on the campus itself.
Top Industries Nearby
Major Employers
- UCLA Health
- The Walt Disney Company
- Warner Bros. Discovery
- Northrop Grumman
- Amgen
Los Angeles — the campus is inside the metro, with Century City about 10 minutes away
Who Thrives Here
UCLA turns away more than nine applicants in ten and does not look at test scores while doing it, so the transcript carries the whole case: 58.8% of enrolled first-years arrived with a straight-A record and the average was 3.94. What that buys is unusually good for a public — 97% come back for a second year, 86.1% graduate in four years and 92.8% within six — at $16,383 in state, or $55,653 from out of it. Aid covers 91% of need, which is close but not all of it, and 44.4% of undergraduates receive need-based aid. The scale is the thing to be honest about. This is a 33,534-undergraduate campus on 419 acres, the smallest in the University of California; 41.8% live in university housing and the rest take on Westwood and LA traffic. Classes reflect that size, with 46.2% of sections under 20 students and 20 students per faculty member. The waitlist is worth reading before you count on it: 13,612 students accepted a place on it for Fall 2025 and 1,514 were admitted.