Author Archives: Selby Kia

At UCLA, for whom the bell curve tolls depends on the professor and not much else. The bell curve, a statistical measure of grading, assesses students’ academic performance relative to other students in the class. This method of grading involves distributing grades along a bell-shaped curve, ensuring a small, top percentage of students get A’s, […]

“What’s your major?” Incoming students, beware. This is one of the most-asked questions of college students, and, for undecided students, the most dread inducing. Each year, many freshman applicants apply as undeclared students to test the waters before declaring a specific major. Corey Hollis, director of academic advising, estimated in 2016, about 1,000 freshmen entered […]

Contrary to what they’re called, many discussion sections do not, well, have discussions. The fifty-minute block of time usually consists of a teaching assistant talking through problems on the board or giving an addendum to a previous lecture to a room full of weary students. TAs should try to avoid emulating lectures in discussion sections, […]

The coming of spring brings more than blooming flowers and looming graduation dates. Spring means internship season – the daunting process of Bruins finding, applying and narrowing down how they will spend their summer. Many students visit the UCLA Career Center or attend a Hire UCLA Fair looking for internships but get overwhelmed with seemingly […]

This Valentine’s Day, while students flock to the theater to see “Fifty Shades Darker” or spend a romantic evening strolling through Westwood with their significant others, many freshmen will be bent over their laptops, frantically trying to enroll in whatever classes they can get. This issue of late pass times and over-enrollment is nothing new […]