Skip to main content

UCLA MEng

Program Experience​

UCLA has a great location, pleasant climate, convenient living, and good rankings. The school is in Westwood on the west side of Los Angeles, not far from LAX airport, with nearby attractions like Santa Monica Beach, Hollywood, and Beverly Hills. For daily life, there are plenty of restaurants and supermarkets near campus -- a 99 Ranch Market recently opened (I haven't been yet, but friends say it's nice). For housing, you can apply for the graduate dorm Weyburn Terrace, priced around $1,200-1,500. Food and grocery shopping are very convenient. If you don't get the on-campus dorm, Westwood, Sawtelle, Century City, and Culver City are all good options for renting, not far from school with manageable commutes.

The program itself is a Master of Engineering (MEng) under the Samueli School of Engineering, designed to rival UC Berkeley's MEng. It's essentially a one-year program with three quarters + one summer session, but you can extend one quarter to graduate in December, which allows time for a summer internship and waiting for return offers. If you find a full-time job before graduation, you can graduate in one year and start earning sooner.

2023 Fall admitted about 150 students, mainly concentrated in the Data Science and AI tracks. Most students are Chinese, with a good mix of undergrads from mainland China and international undergrads.

However, starting from 24 Fall, whether you can defer has become uncertain. The program director is also irresponsible and often doesn't reply to emails. Students entering in 24 Fall didn't even know whether the program could be deferred or whether they could get CPT. Be mentally prepared if you want to come.

Admission Threshold & Data Points​

GPA 3.7+ and GRE 325+

  1. 211 university, Software Engineering undergrad, GPA 3.98
  2. SJTU CS undergrad, GPA 88, TOEFL 105
  3. SJTU Automation undergrad, GPA 3.55, TOEFL 106
  4. Nankai CS undergrad, GPA 86, TOEFL 104
  5. UCI CS undergrad, GPA 3.96
  6. University of Nottingham Ningbo China, CS undergrad, GPA 3.85

Course Structure​

  1. Course selection is relatively free (if you can't get in, ask the professor for a PTE). 2. Workload is adjustable, leaving enough time for job hunting and LeetCode grinding.

The program requires 8 courses: 2 core technical courses, 3 elective technical courses, 3 professional development courses, and a capstone project. You can only choose from a given list, and selection restrictions are quite numerous -- many interesting courses are off-limits (you can pay extra to take them, but they won't count toward graduation requirements). For the mainstream Data Science and AI tracks, courses are mainly data science and machine learning content -- some even quite theoretical -- with no systems or programming courses. If you want to transition to SDE, this program may not be recommended, since there's little opportunity to take foundational CS courses.

Professional development courses cover soft skills like communication, project management, and finance, as well as data analysis and decision-making courses. While these courses don't directly help with job hunting, they can improve your presentation skills. Reportedly many of them grade leniently, making them easy to coast through.

The program has no thesis requirement but requires a capstone project during the summer, typically in collaboration with a company that provides the topic. It can be done remotely -- you can work on it while doing your internship, with a final presentation at the end. However, partner companies are mainly local businesses with few major tech companies, so hoping to build big tech connections through the capstone may not be realistic.

Job Outcomes & Data Points​

For job hunting, the school's career fair is mediocre -- the attending companies are mostly unheard of. The program's career counselor regularly sends job descriptions, but the quality isn't great -- you're better off browsing LinkedIn or Glassdoor yourself. So overall, job hunting is entirely self-driven, and the program provides little help.

CPT/OPT support is decent. The program is STEM-designated, and CPT applications require completing one academic year (Fall, Winter, Spring).

  1. UCSD Math undergrad, no internship, landed Amazon intern and returned full-time
  2. UCLA EE undergrad, had small company internship and open-source experience, landed small company new grad
  3. NTU/NTHU EE undergrad, 9 months RA experience, GPA 3.82, found contract work
  4. Zhejiang University undergrad, had small company internship in Hangzhou, landed NVIDIA internship, ultimately went to TikTok new grad
  5. University of Nottingham Ningbo China CS undergrad, had small company internship in Ningbo, landed small company DS intern
  6. Zhejiang University CS undergrad, multiple QR internships and SDE internships, landed Google new grad
  7. NTU undergrad, multiple WorldQuant internships, landed Bay Area full-time researcher
  8. NTUST ECE undergrad, GPA 3.81/4.3, two years full-time experience, landed California small company intern

Who This Program Suits​

If you already have work experience and are mainly coming to get the degree or a work visa without caring much about course content, this program is decent. LA has great weather, manageable living pressure, and the course workload isn't heavy -- you can study and job hunt at the same time for an overall pleasant experience. But if you're hoping to use the program's courses and resources to improve yourself, or leverage the program's career support to get into big tech, you might want to reconsider, since the program's resources are fairly limited.