Analysis of the Daily Bruin's fall 2018 interns

The start of each school year brings new beginnings for the Daily Bruin as its applications start to flood in. With them, comes a wave of new interns and opportunities for the staff to grow.

The application process itself spans the course of two weeks. First, prospective interns fill out an online application, due October 5 this year, which typically involves responses to short answer questions and submissions of related work. The editors then select a subset of the applicants to interview in person. Once the interns have been chosen, they undergo a two to three week training to become a contributor.

Double-click on the legend to view specific sections or go back to the original graph. Single-click on a section to add or remove its line from the graph.

The opportunity to be hired as a Daily Bruin intern remains competitive. This year had a 43 percent overall acceptance rate, comparable to fall 2017’s 42 percent and a drop from 2016’s 50 percent. The number of applied and accepted interns remained fairly constant; 213 out of 494 interns were accepted this fall versus 206 out of 488 interns who were accepted in fall 2017. (Note: The Daily Bruin discontinued its Radio department after 2016 and Social Media did not accept applications for 2018.)

Online (which includes the Stack), the most-applied-to section at 132 applications, was even more competitive this cycle than the last. The section had nearly twice as many applicants as the next most-applied-to section, but, compared to the previous one, it also halved the number interns it accepted this cycle to 17. These numbers resulted in the Online department having the lowest acceptance rate of all the sections at 13 percent.

Not every section lowered the amount of interns hired however. Graphics has a major boost in intern power, increasing its intern numbers from five to nine. News also experienced growth changes; while the number of applicants nearly doubled from fall 2017, it took 50 percent more interns. Opinion also increased its intern class from 11 in 2017 to 24 this year.

Double-click on the legend to view specific age groups or go back to the original graph. Single-click on a section to add or remove its bar from the graph.

This year, first-year students comprised the majority of the Daily Bruin intern class, at a total of 51 percent. They dominated the Photo and Design intern classes, comprising 73 percent and 90 percent, respectively. Seven times more first years were admitted than fourth years.

The second-most-represented class year was a close tossup between second- and third-year students. The number of second-year student interns was comparable to the number of third-years, with second-year interns trailing third-year ones by 2 percent. Second-year students comprised 44 percent of Graphics’ class and 42 of Video’s. On the other hand, third-year students comprised 35 percent of the Online intern class and 33 percent of the Blogging class.

Though second- and third-year students were well represented in certain sections, the proportion of accepted interns per class decreased as year increased.

Single-click on a section in the legend to add or remove it from the pie chart.

Daily Bruin's incoming class represents a total of 74 undergraduate and graduate majors. The section with the most majors is News, with 23 majors represented. The section with the least majors is Online, with only 7 majors represented. (Note: Double majors are counted as two unique majors if they are from separate departments.)

In some sections, a single major comprises the significant plurality of the section. For example, 40 percent of the 15 Arts & Entertainment section new-hires are English majors, and interestingly, 31 percent of the 13 Illustrations section new hires are Psychology majors. Computer Science, Computer Science & Engineering, and Linguistics and Computer Science majors combined comprise 76 percent of Online section new-hires.

Overall, English, Psychology, and Economics represented the top three majors of the incoming interns at 33 percent. Psychology and Economics are also two of the top six most popular majors at UCLA.

To new and returning applicants, it is still possible to become part of the Daily Bruin this year. The Daily Bruin will be recruiting again during winter and spring quarter. Applications for winter quarter recruitment will open early January.