Hold on to your hats, folks: Close to 40,000 students are on their way back to Westwood.

 

The rush starts with move-in weekend on the Hill, which began Thursday, Sept. 16, a week before the official start of classes. Staff and faculty are gearing up for the True Bruin Welcome, a week of multi-thousand–meal picnics, activities aplenty and — perhaps the highlight — UCLA Volunteer Day, when 5,000 new students and 1,000 other Bruins will fan out across the Los Angeles region in the nation's biggest student volunteer event of its kind.

 

Move-in will run through Sunday, Sept. 19, in carefully organized shifts to accommodate the 9,500 students and their families who will converge on the Hill with suitcases, computers and big dreams.

 

After the controlled chaos of move-in weekend, a week of activities gets started Sunday night with Bruin Bash, which includes an evening concert at Drake Stadium and a dance at the neighboring Los Angeles Tennis Center. Though you need a UCLA student ID to attend these events, staff and faculty will have the opportunity to enjoy the relative calm in Westwood Village for one last evening.

 

On Monday, Royce Quad gets taken over from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. by the annual Enormous Activities Fair, which introduces students to every club, department and service that can squeeze into the plaza. At 4 p.m., expect a roaring crowd in Drake Stadium again as Chancellor Gene Block hails this year's 8,000 freshmen and transfer students at the New Student Welcome, with a keynote by UCLA alumnus and cancer survivor Scott Greenberg. Stand clear of the Intramural Field, as the crowd will swarm there next for a massive barbecue.

 

For Volunteer Day on Tuesday, Sept. 21, some 5,000 new Bruins will catch a ride on one of 100 buses traveling to volunteer sites, where they will scrub and paint homeless shelters, clean beaches, clear flammable brush at Griffith Park, garden at a senior center and beautify schools, to name just a few of the 22 projects. Nearly a thousand staff, faculty, upperclassmen and alumni will volunteer as task captains to lead the students in community service.

 

The party returns to campus on Wednesday with a UCLA Club Sports festival from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. on the Intramural Field. Students can join a soccer game, watch a demo or learn to fence. An information tent will also provide information to job-seekers. Throughout the day, students will also gather for book discussions about "Zeitoun," Dave Egger's novel about a Syrian man's struggle to survive both Hurricane Katrina and anti-Arab racism. For the Common Book Experience, the novel was distributed to new students this summer to give them a shared experience encapsulating UCLA ideals such as learning, social justice and engagement.

 

At 10 p.m. Wednesday night, students can pile onto buses and barrel toward Target to pick up last-minute school supplies and get to know each other in an exclusive Bruin takeover of the store.

 

Just when students are good and exhausted from a week of moving in, attending concerts, volunteering and playing sports, classes begin, on Thursday, Sept. 23. Students have a broad range of choices in UCLA's world-class, comprehensive curriculum, with more than 3,000 undergraduate courses offered each year in more than 125 majors across disciplines ranging from the arts, social sciences and humanities to the physical sciences and life sciences. UCLA also offers nearly 200 graduate programs through 11 highly regarded professional schools and the UCLA College of Letters and Science. Year after year, students have made UCLA the most popular campus in the nation for freshman applicants, with 57,651 having applied for fall 2010 admission.

 

This week, the 4,700 of those applicants who are now starting at UCLA will find out exactly what all the fuss is about.

 

 

By the numbers (approximated using 2009 figures):