Scientific Environment for UCLA

UCLA is the second-oldest campus of the UC system. It offers over 125 undergraduate majors and nearly 200 graduate degree programs in a wide range of disciplines. With an enrollment of over 33,000 undergraduate and nearly 14,000 graduate students, UCLA has the largest enrollment in the UC system, with over 145,000 freshman applications for Fall 2023.  

UCLA is home to the College and 12 highly ranked professional schools. The College is home to more than 85 percent of undergraduates and four academic divisions: Humanities, Social Sciences, Physical Sciences and Life Sciences. The professional schools focus on fields of study that include the arts, education, law, medicine, music, public affairs and more.  16 Nobel laureates have been affiliated with the university as faculty, researchers, or alumni. 11 UCLA faculty and alumni are National Medal of Science winners, and three professors have won Pulitzer Prizes for general non-fiction or history. Among the current faculty, 59 are members of the National Academy of Sciences; 29 are members of the National Academy of Engineering; 42, the National Academy of Medicine; and 167, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.   

The 2023-24 U.S. News & World Report ranked UCLA 1st among public universities and 15th overall among national universities. UCLA ranked 14th in U.S. News & World Report Global Ranking in 2022-23 and 18th in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings (2024). UCLA ranked 6th among all universities for research expenditures in the sciences and engineering during FY21 according to a report by the National Science Foundation. In FY23, UCLA ranked 12th in NIH funding, with 888 awards totaling over $578M. In 2022, UCLA’s total research awards exceeded more than $1 billion, receiving $1.7 billion from federal agencies, industry-sponsored awards, nonprofit and charitable organizations, state government, and institutions of higher education. In the 2023-24 edition of the U.S. News & World Report, UCLA Medical Center was named a #1 hospital in California and Los Angeles, with now 34 consecutive years on the Honor Roll.  UCLA Health was designated “high-performing” relative to other hospitals in treating patients 65 and older in 21 common procedures and conditions. Among them are various cancers, hip and knee replacement, heart attack and bypass surgery, stroke, and diabetes.  Thirteen UCLA Health medical specialties placed in the top 10. They are: ear, nose and throat (#3); gastroenterology/gastrointestinal surgery (#3); geriatrics (#3); cancer (#4); pulmonology and lung surgery (#4); ophthalmology (#5); psychiatry (#5); diabetes and endocrinology (#6); neurology and neurosurgery (#6); orthopaedics (#7); obstetrics and gynecology (#8); rheumatology (#9); and urology (#10).

For more information, please visit the UCLA website.

Last Updated
November 27, 2023