Understanding Units

The unit structure for our summer ESL courses can be confusing for students who are not accustomed to it. We want you to fully understand how you should go about combining coursework to meet your individual academic needs, but also to meet the University’s educational regulations. The information below should help you get started.

  • The university requires that all international summer students enroll in a minimum of 8 units.
  • Each of our summer ESL courses consist of 4 units, which means that if a student wishes to study only ESL at UCLA, that student must enroll in a minimum of 2 courses offered by the Summer ESL Program.
  • Students who choose to enroll in a mixture of both ESL and non-ESL courses will need to consult other programs to ensure that they have a combined 8 unit course load.
  • Please also note that UCLA requires additional proficiency verification before students are allowed to enroll in non-ESL courses.

To see the units for each of course offerings, click here to go to our courses page.