Do not apply to UCLA

[livenlearn]

They are very inconsiderate. I submitted my application in september then sent plenty of e-mails to know if they had received my application . i did not get any feedback. Then on december 7th, a week after the deadline, they sent me a mail to tell me that my application is incomplete and will not be processed. You got to be kidding right. A lot of my friends had a similar experience. Last year, a friend of mine received an offer a week before the start of the academic year...... BAM.

[cyj1992]

I hate UCLA too. Because its applying process is too complicated, I have to apply both through SOPHAS and its graduate website, apply twice, pay twice, everything send them twice!!! It really wasted me a lot of money!

[livenlearn]

haha i know  right , it's ridiculous which other programs are you applying to?  mph? PhD?

[123hardasABC]

I applied twice and paid twice for Berkeley :X They're my alma mater so I feel like that's okay....right??

[livenlearn]

i like berkeley, admin is easy to get in touch with . I got two skyp calls wth two berkeley professors before even applying. UCLA you don't get any feedback .... you have to harrass them et etc

[holykrp]

Glad I'm not the only one... I e-mailed the school and department trying to get in touch with someone who I could ask questions about their program. Not even a reply! Not worth tracking down, either. Good school but not the top, and the top schools were much friendlier.

[juilletmercredi]

"Good school but not the top"?  What on earth do you mean?  UCLA is a top 10 school of public health.

[holykrp]

"Good school but not the top"?  What on earth do you mean?  UCLA is a top 10 school of public health.

 

Just that Harvard, Emory, Columbia, Michigan, and Johns Hopkins all were happy to answer any questions; contacted UCLA at multiple touch points and got crickets. I'm sure it's a networking thing, but for me particularly, I wasn't concerned with chasing it down because they don't have much going on in my area of research interest. I contacted them merely to cover all bases in case I was missing something from the website. I'm sure they're at the "top" in other research areas. 

Edited November 21, 2014 by holykrp

[niihla08]

hmm I applied and got an offer last year  for MPH (though I didn't end up taking it) but I thought they were nice and helpful. When I got my offer, I received a personal phone call from the director congratulating me and asking if I had any questions, which she followed up on in later emails. Maybe they are a little understaffed or something right now but I don't think it's a good measure of how the program will be.

[AlphacentauriC]

hmm I applied and got an offer last year  for MPH (though I didn't end up taking it) but I thought they were nice and helpful. When I got my offer, I received a personal phone call from the director congratulating me and asking if I had any questions, which she followed up on in later emails. Maybe they are a little understaffed or something right now but I don't think it's a good measure of how the program will be.

Maybe they have changed? I think the big public schools like UCLA, they don't have the resources that the private schools have? Why they can't respond to all questions asked by prospective students?

[slaNYC]

i know not getting a response from a school is frustrating. i get it. but ucla has 5 departments: community health sciences, epi, health policy and management, environmental health and biostats. one cannot just say don't apply to ucla. we have no idea which department(s) were difficult to get information from. just because one department didn't reply doesn't mean they all don't. moreover, during application time departments become overwhelmed. when i was applying i emailed schools and often had to call when i did not get a response to my email (this happened at multiple schools including columbia and berkeley). there are only a few staff and hundreds of applicants with questions.  my point is, make decisions about school applications based on more than a few unhappy people posting on a message board. afterall, we know that people who are most unhappy will take the time to post or fill out a survey or an evaluation whereas those that are satisfied are much less likely to do so. what we have here is a very biased group of people!