Arterburn is a first-year undeclared student.
By Jessica Arterburn
You worked your butt off for four years in high school to get into UCLA. You’ve sweated, cried, bled and ached over exams, papers and grades to finally obtain acceptance into a top-tier university. At last, after so much drudgery, you are ready to pursue your academic passion. You have already selected your perfect major: communication studies in the College of Letters & Science.
Communication studies is the only major in the College of L&S that provides a business concentration in the mass media industry. It sounds like a dream come true, except the communication studies major is one of many impacted majors at UCLA. This means that more students want to be in the major than there are positions available. The program must approve requests from students before they can declare the major.
As a UCLA student, you might be forced to settle for a major that you are less interested in. Unfortunately, this happens to many students who attend UCLA in a quest to further their education.
Communication studies at UCLA is popular because it is an interdisciplinary major that encompasses aspects from four academic divisions. It is also directly related to the mass media and located in the entertainment industry’s capital. More than 1,000 apply to the communication program each year.
Before last year, only 250 of these students, including transfer students, were accepted in one year. Last year, the program accepted just under 500 students, but the goal is to reach 700 students soon. Unfortunately for the aspiring communication students, acceptances are still far below that objective and each year the number of student applications increases.
The average GPA for freshman applicants is about a 3.5 and a slightly lower 3.3 for second-years The committee within the program reviews applications then makes a clean cut, taking only the top students. It is based purely on statistics.
Eugenie Dye, undergraduate counselor for communication studies, stated that if more resources were available, more students could be admitted. Communications is not significantly different in class load or upper division requirements from any of the other L&S majors. The program is simply so popular that it doesn’t have sufficient funding and faculty to admit every student who applies. Attempts have been made to increase faculty and available resources, but the numbers are still too low.
Students are only given two chances to apply to be accepted into the major – at the end of freshman and sophomore year. During their first two years, students typically start or sometimes complete the communication prerequisites. If, however, students are not accepted into the major by their second year, they have to abandon the attempt.
Dye advises students to consciously plan out a backup if they are not admitted. Students who are denied generally transfer to the sociology, psychology, or political science departments because some of the courses overlap. But a majority of the classes taken by second-year students don’t fulfill requirements for other majors.
These post-communication hopefuls now have empty credits and are far behind in their second choice majors. This exact situation could happen to me very soon. Since I’ve taken the lower division courses, I have no choice but to start upper division communication courses to stay on track. If I don’t get into the major, I will have invested two years and completed many courses that apply to nothing but the communications major.
By getting into a prestigious university such as UCLA, students provide evidence of their passion for knowledge and the ability to succeed. Program committees are denying capable students of the chance to follow their aspirations. Denied students turn to alternative majors simply to graduate, but often change too late and fall behind.
Students should be able to study the major of their choice. The communication department is working to improve and expand the program, but the changes are not happening quickly enough to keep up with the increasing demand.