University of California, Los Angeles

Overview

The University of California, Los Angeles is a public research university on a 419-acre campus in the Westwood community of Los Angeles, one of 10 campuses in the University of California system (UCLA). It was founded in 1919 as the Southern Branch of the University of California, and the Westwood campus officially opened in 1929 (UCLA). In 2025–26 it enrolled 49,013 students — 33,534 undergraduates, 13,898 graduate students, and 1,581 interns and residents in medicine and dentistry — the largest enrollment in the UC system (UCLA). For fall 2025 it received 173,374 undergraduate applications, making it the most applied-to university in the country (UCLA). U.S. News & World Report has ranked it the nation’s No. 1 public university in eight of the past nine years (UCLA).

The scholarship a sitcom built

UCLA’s most unusual endowment began with a television show. The Big Bang Theory Scholarship Endowment was established in 2015 to support low-income undergraduates pursuing degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics — the fields its namesake sitcom’s characters worked in (UCLA Newsroom). It was, the university says, the first UCLA scholarship created by and named for a television series, funded originally by Chuck Lorre’s family foundation together with more than 50 cast and crew members, producers, and writers of the show, plus the show’s studio, network, and corporate partners (UCLA Newsroom; Daily Bruin). In 2019 the endowment was enhanced to add graduate fellowships (UCLA Newsroom).

The program’s scale changed in March 2024, when the Chuck Lorre Family Foundation pledged $24.5 million — funding the new UCLA Chuck Lorre Scholars Program, a leadership-development program offering four years of scholarship, mentorship, and support services starting the summer before freshman year, plus up to five years of fellowship funding for scholars who continue to graduate studies in STEM (UCLA Newsroom). The gift doubled undergraduate support to 80 scholars each year, in perpetuity (Daily Bruin). To date the program has supported 78 STEM students, including 35 current undergraduates and 16 graduate fellows; 37 recipients have earned UCLA bachelor’s degrees, and half of all recipients have been women (UCLA Newsroom).

The scholarship’s distinctive feature is the community around it. While the show was still in production, scholars were invited to the set to watch live tapings and meet the cast and crew; scholar Christian Aguilar described having lunch with Lorre and Mayim Bialik on the Warner Bros. lot, discussing life at UCLA and Bialik’s own experiences as a Bruin (Daily Bruin). The UCLA ties run deep: Bialik earned her undergraduate and doctoral degrees in neuroscience at UCLA, and David Saltzberg — a UCLA professor of physics and astronomy — served as the show’s science consultant (Daily Bruin). During the COVID-19 pandemic, new scholars were mailed boxes they were told not to open until a Zoom call with Lorre — inside were iPad Pros (Daily Bruin). Gina Poe, a neurobiologist and professor of integrative biology and physiology, serves as the program’s inaugural faculty chair; she says the scholarship has covered much of students’ tuition plus stipends for housing and lab work, and that the new funding would pay for a dedicated program director and open up international lab opportunities STEM students often miss (Daily Bruin).

The scholars’ own accounts give the program its texture. Karrin Evans, a third-year neuroscience student, said the award made attending UCLA feasible and let her join a community of people passionate about STEM; she studies sensory over-responsivity in children with autism and plans graduate school aimed at applying brain research to special education (Daily Bruin). Aguilar graduated with a computer science bachelor’s in 2023 and moved directly into a CS graduate program, building software to expand access to reliable, clean drinking water — a path he says the fellowship’s flexibility made possible (Daily Bruin). Jack Reid, a first-generation American studying microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics, put it simply: “It meant everything to know that UCLA and The Chuck Lorre Family Foundation believed in me enough to give me this incredible opportunity” (UCLA Newsroom).

The university at scale

Beyond the endowment, UCLA operates at a scale few public universities match. Its annual budget is about $11 billion, and it takes in roughly $1.6 billion a year in competitively awarded research grants and contracts, with more than 6,000 funded projects underway at any time (UCLA). It holds more than 1,200 active U.S. patents, employs about 5,700 faculty members and 43,000 staff, and counts more than 670,000 living alumni (UCLA). The College and 12 professional schools offer more than 5,000 courses (UCLA). Nearly nine in ten entering first-year students graduate within four years, and about 93 percent within six (UCLA). Nearly half of undergraduates pay no tuition at all, and close to a third receive Pell Grants (UCLA).

Athletics is part of the institution’s public identity: UCLA has won 127 NCAA team championships, the second most in the nation, and in August 2024 it left the Pac-12 for the Big Ten Conference (UCLA). UCLA Health operates five hospitals and more than 280 clinics (UCLA). Julio Frenk became the university’s seventh chancellor on January 1, 2025 (UCLA).

What this profile does not claim

This profile does not state the endowment’s original 2015 dollar size, which no full-read source confirmed. It describes the 80-scholars-a-year figure as the program’s stated plan, not a confirmed current count. Rankings, enrollment, and budget figures are UCLA’s own published numbers; they were not independently audited for this profile. It does not cover UCLA’s academic departments, admissions criteria, or campus controversies beyond what the cited sources contain.