University Communications

"I've seen a side of life that was new to me. It has made me think about things I've never thought about before, like human interaction and cultural differences." — Joy Wu

"I was attracted to the idea of a liberal arts college in a large university. I liked the interdisciplinary aspect and the individual attention." — Brooke McGowan

The Honors Collegium courses in particular can be life altering for many students.

"I've seen a side of life that was new to me," says Joy Wu, a third-year neuroscience major. "It has made me think about things I've never thought about before, like human interaction and cultural differences."

While her regular classes focus on the substance of her major — biology, chemistry, physics and the like — the Collegium courses she has taken have been expansive. It has been in classes like "Politics and the Rhetoric of Literature" and "Literature and Culture of the American South" that Wu has been able to branch out "and learn about the world."

For many, the very fact that UCLA offers such a program — with its brew of enriched academics, access to scholarships and internships, highly involved professors and counselors, and an interdisciplinary approach that often marries seemingly disparate subjects — is a key factor in their decision to choose UCLA over other prestigious schools.

"Cal's package was more flashy, but UCLA had the Honors Collegium," says Brooke McGowan, a senior comparative literature major who was accepted to Berkeley, UC San Diego and Mills College in the San Francisco Bay area. "It was the deciding factor.

"I was attracted to the idea of a liberal arts college in a large university. I liked the interdisciplinary aspect and the individual attention," says McGowan, who has twice won UCLA's Peter Rotter Essay Prize.

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