College admissions is competitive,

UCLA is a bubble environment within LA, but it's my bubble and i love it. it's got a big administration and it can be easy to get lost. they hype up the honors department, but the honors counselors are awful. if you need academic advice, go to your departmental counselor - the english one, at least, is great.

living on the hill is a lot of fun, there is always something to do. for freshman i'd recommend the basic residence hall dorms, because it's easier to get to know people. suites can be a little more isolated, but they're fine for second year when you've established a social circle.

the dining halls are amazing. the restaurants aren't as wonderful, but they're still extremely convenient - during rush hour they can take forever though, so if you want breakfast before class, be sure to go early.

Not as hard as I expected - you can bullshit your way through a lot of classes. the English department has some really great professors but the classes are pretty huge, so what you get out of it depends entirely on what you put into it. if you want to get to know your professor, take the honors sections. north campus students are not competitive in the ways south campus students are because we're not graded on a curve.

UCLA has a very open community, with a student group for just about any hobby/sport/religion/ethnicity/community/minority/etc you could belong to. sometimes it feels like the groups separate a bit too much and get exclusive to the point of no interaction.

a great lgbt center.

some people get ridiculously dressed up for class, others go in flip flops and sweats. you can easily spot who the sorority girls are. a lot of people do the crossword and the sudoku from the daily bruin in class.

Undie run is spectacular!

asian, smart, studious

they have a basis in fact, but of course you can't make generalizations about such a huge campus population. we have all kinds - the nerds, the jocks, the greeks, etc. there are a million tiny niches each with their own cultures.