So far, I've enjoyed it at Anderson. By and large, my classmates are sharp and fun to be around. The culture is truly collaborative and everyone keeps their ego in check, which might not be the same at other top programs. The career center has been excellent about ensuring that everyone has the preparation they need to apply for internships, and the 2nd-year students are extremely helpful resources as well.
This is a great spot to be if you're in tech. By virtue of its LA location (Silicon Beach 10 minutes away and Silicon Valley a 1.5-hour flight) and its west-coast alumni network, there are a lot of easily-accessible opportunities for all sizes of tech companies, from startups to giants. While it might be tough to land your exact dream job (and unless you're at Stanford/HBS it will be tough regardless), the wide array of companies and roles allows just about everyone to find a place where they can fit and be happy. Sure, it might be just a tiny bit harder to get the interviews you're dying for compared to an M-7 school (slightly lower rank/brand, plus sooo many people want to be in tech here so it crowds out interview slots), but the range of opportunity and ease of making connections definitely makes up for it.
If you're into marketing, entertainment, or entrepreneurship, this is also a great place to be. However, if you want consulting/PE/VC you might be better off going purely for the highest-ranked school you can get into, though. There's no way to sugarcoat it, but some job tracks only really seek out the bluest of blue-bloods, and UCLA, while a great school, isn't going to give you the sexy brand you need on those career tracks. If you're not looking at those jobs, though, UCLA is a fantastic place to be!
On top of everything else, it's a blast to live in LA and I can absolutely guarantee your quality of life will be much higher at UCLA than any other top-15 program.
Tech: Huge range of companies actively recruit here and there are tons of alums all over. Due to the high volume of people applying to the "big" companies (Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, etc) you might have a harder time getting interviews at those than at other top schools with higher ranks. However, beyond that, it's much easier to get into tech here than most other places due to location, you'll just have to do less legwork in general, plus you can always get connections through academic internships.
Consulting/PE/VC: If this is what you want, you should try to get into an M7, the numbers don't lie. It'll just be easier for you that way. Anderson is a much better tech/marketing/media/entrepreneurship school than it is a finance/consulting mill.
Overall BSchool experience (5.0)
Schools contribution (4.0)
Classmates rating (4.0)
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