🔺 r/gradadmissionsusecadora·62 days ago
A warning about UCLA from a current PhD student
I'm a current PhD student at UCLA, and I feel robbed after turning down three other perfectly good options after I was accepted in 2025. Now that the grad school applications season is starting up, I wanted to warn you about my experience so that you all don't end up in the same position as me. Long story short, UCLA has a very strict, very opaque process for determining whether first-year PhD students are considered "residents" of the state of California, and if you fail any step of their requirements, you will be forced to pay $5,000 per quarter ($15,000 per year) of out-of-state tuition starting in your second year until you "establish residence" as determined by the university's residence department. Added to the rate the university charges for rent in grad student housing, this is already more than the ~$33K they pay you per year (which is already difficult enough to survive on in LA as is). I was just denied residency because I missed a December 15 deadline to get my California driver's license—a deadline which I was never told about, not over email from the university, not from my department, and not during the residence department's presentation to my cohort at the beginnin…