UCLA stands for the University of California, Los Angeles. California runs one big public university with campuses in different cities — Berkeley, Los Angeles, San Diego and others — and UCLA is the Los Angeles one. It is large, hard to get into, and well known both for research and for its sports teams, especially basketball; its teams are called the Bruins, and its old rivalry with the crosstown university USC is a famous piece of Los Angeles life. You say the four letters one by one: U-C-L-A. Like other university names of this kind, it normally takes no 'the' — 'She studies at UCLA', 'a UCLA professor'. You will meet it used as an adjective in front of another noun quite often: a UCLA study, UCLA researchers, the UCLA campus. Be careful not to mix it up with USC, which is a different, private university in the same city, or with 'UC' on its own, which means the whole University of California system.