H ere at Hotseat, we fetch and scrape hourly enrollment numbers for every single UCLA course. We’ve been doing this since 2019! We visualize this data into nifty charts and will even text you when a spot opens up in a certain course!

With this data, a common question we get from students is “how likely is it that I’ll get off the waitlist”? Let’s go through the data and see!

Drops and late adds

UCLA students can enroll in and drop all of their courses during the first two weeks of the quarter. After week two, things start to get a little trickier. Impacted classes can only be dropped with a petition, fee, and a note on your transcript. Courses can still be enrolled in, but waitlists are dropped on the Friday of week two and many departments “close” courses after this time to prevent late enrollment.

For this list, we’re only interested in drops that free up a seat for someone else. This means focusing on the number of drops during the first two weeks of Winter Quarter. Last year, that was from January 3 to January 14, 2022. Here are the 20 most-dropped courses of weeks one and two for the winter 2022 quarter at UCLA.

Top 20 most-dropped classes

20. EC ENGR 201D: Design in Nanoscale Technologies (Puneet Gupta)

Starting enrollment: 45 (9 waitlisted)
Ending enrollment: 28 (0 waitlisted)
Total drops: 26

19. LIFESCI 30B: Mathematics for Life Scientists (Jane Shevtsov)

Starting enrollment: 346 (0 waitlisted)
Ending enrollment: 319 (0 waitlisted)
Total drops: 27

T16. COM SCI 238: Quantum Programming (Jens Palsberg)

Starting enrollment: 62 (39 waitlisted)
Ending enrollment: 66 (7 waitlisted)
Total drops: 28

T16. LING 20: Introduction to Linguistic Analysis (Claire Moore-Cantwell)

Starting enrollment: 200 (47 waitlisted)
Ending enrollment: 200 (19 waitlisted)
Total drops: 28

16. SOCIOL 111: Social Networks (Omar Lizardo)

Starting enrollment: 300 (59 waitlisted)
Ending enrollment: 300 (31 waitlisted)
Total drops: 28

15. PHYSICS 5B: Physics for Life Sciences Majors: Thermodynamics, Fluids, Waves, Light, and Optics (Justin Lancaster)

Starting enrollment: 178 (0 waitlisted)
Ending enrollment: 149 (0 waitlisted)
Total drops: 29

T12. JAPAN 80: How Does It Move? Action and Moving Image in Modern Japan (Junko Yamazakiction)

Starting enrollment: 225 (33 waitlisted)
Ending enrollment: 225 (3 waitlisted)
Total drops: 30

T12. AN N EA 15W: Women and Power in Ancient World (Kara Cooney)

Starting enrollment: 189 (49 waitlisted)
Ending enrollment: 191 (17 waitlisted)
Total drops: 30

T12. ASIA AM 20W: Contemporary Asian American Communities (Lily Anne Welty Tamai)

Starting enrollment: 120 (29 waitlisted)
Ending enrollment: 119 (0 waitlisted)
Total drops: 30

11. EC ENGR 239AS: Special TopicsAchuta Kadambi in Signals and Systems: Lecture 1 (Achuta Kadambi)

Starting enrollment: 82 (14 waitlisted)
Ending enrollment: 65 (0 waitlisted)
Total drops: 31

10. ETHNMUS M108A: Music of Latin America: Mexico, Central America, and Caribbean Isles (David Fernando Castaneda Jr.)

Starting enrollment: 178 (0 waitlisted)
Ending enrollment: 146 (0 waitlisted)
Total drops: 32

T8. LING 1: Introduction to Study of Language (Giuseppina Silvestri)

Starting enrollment: 500 (99 waitlisted)
Ending enrollment: 500 (66 waitlisted)
Total drops: 33

T8. SOCIOL 1: Introductory Sociology (Terri Anderson)

Starting enrollment: 300 (58 waitlisted)
Ending enrollment: 300 (25 waitlisted)
Total drops: 33

7. PHILOS 7: Introduction to Philosophy of Mind (Gloria Andrada De Gregorio)

Starting enrollment: 300 (58 waitlisted)
Ending enrollment: 300 (24 waitlisted)
Total drops: 34

6. CHIN 50: Chinese Civilization (Minchen Li)

Starting enrollment: 200 (38 waitlisted)
Ending enrollment: 200 (2 waitlisted)
Total drops: 36

5. ARCH&UD 10A: History of Architecture and Urban Design: Prehistory to Mannerism (Melissa Rovner)

Starting enrollment: 240 (15 waitlisted)
Ending enrollment: 217 (0 waitlisted)
Total drops: 38

4. ANTHRO 3: Culture and Society (Salih Aciksoz)

Starting enrollment: 306 (53 waitlisted)
Ending enrollment: 308 (12 waitlisted)
Total drops: 39

T2. LIFESCI 23L: Introduction to Laboratory and Scientific Methodology (Gaston Pfluegl)

Starting enrollment: 600 (33 waitlisted)
Ending enrollment: 592 (1 waitlisted)
Total drops: 40

T2. SOCIOL 121: Sociology of Religion (Jason Sexton)

Starting enrollment: 150 (26 waitlisted)
Ending enrollment: 136 (0 waitlisted)
Total drops: 40

1. CHEM 153A: Biochemistry: Introduction to Structure, Enzymes, and Metabolism (Ryan Lannan)

Starting enrollment: 348 (2 waitlisted)
Ending enrollment: 305 (0 waitlisted)
Total drops: 45

Summary

All of this data is based on enrollment and waitlist numbers obtained directly from the UCLA Registrar’s website from January 3-14, 2022. Took one of these courses and dropped it? Tell us about it by writing a review at Hotseat!

If any of the professors listed above would like to add an addendum regarding why they feel their class was dropped, please email me at drops@hotseat.io.

Interested in more enrollment data analysis like this? We’re open to ideas at suggestions@hotseat.io.