<p>I know UCLA is harder but how much harder is UCLA than a community college course. For example, for calculus II, what makes it harder to do well in UCLA than community college. Im asking this question cause i want to know how competitive UCLA is if i were to transfer. thanks</p>
<p>From my CC, I would say that CCs are easier just because theres a higher amount of teachers who have an easy grading system. In addition, I don't remember there being any curves, so there wasn't any competition. </p>
<p>It's really hard to compare because during your CC life, you will be taking GEs. While at UCLA, you will be taking upper D's. </p>
<p>My CC was a downgraded high school. Felt like high school but easier o_O.</p>
<p>I believe CURVES are what make everything harder here at UCLA. Competition KILLS.</p>
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As mrMOO mentioned, the curve makes UCLA more difficult than your typical community college. In my experience, I have not experienced curves in math and science courses in CC. For one thing, my classes had about 30 students and well, the grades were inflated. In the case that they did employ curves, the quality of the students would force an easier curve compared to how I would compare to the typical 4.0 2100+ college freshman at UCLA. In addition, in order to consistently distribute A's, B's, and C's (instead of purely F's), the curriculum would need to make itself relatively more lenient than compared to UCLA in order to ensure a success rate. You can't fail everyone if we were employing some arbitrary universal standard about how well one should perform in calculus. So, there are a couple of levels upon which to compare the difficulty of a typical CC to UCLA.</p>
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<p>As others have mentioned, it's the competition/curve that makes the difference. The difference, in my experience, is that you can't cram a whole term worth of material the night before a UCLA exam. On the other hand, I've been able to do all nighters for math, science, etc. and get A's at my CC.</p>
<p>A UCLA exam is designed to fail you, thus leaving you to compete with your classmates, provided it's a curved course. Whereas a CC exam is made to be do-able. Does that make sense?</p>
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<p>Well, that depends on you and your community college. Most transfers do really well because they are motivated enough. Others not so well. However, most would agree that community college is way easier. Some even feel that they were cheated out of some knowledge or difficulty. Some CC professors don't really care, and they just make tests easy just to avoid complaining. For example, a transfer has said that his calculus III professor made the exams from examples from the book and slightly modified homework problems. He never really had the need to actually learn the material, and he ended up suffering in EE 101, which involves a lot of vector calculus. </p>
<p> [quote=sliguy101] thanks
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<p>You're welcome!</p>
<p>Also consider that GrassPuppet is an engineering student - so, he always experiences curves, ugly grades, and failure. :(</p>
<p>The biggest thing, at least for me, was that CC does not really prepare you for UCLA. It's so easy that it can't possibly prepare you. How well you do is a result of how motivated you are as an individual. But that's just me :).</p>
<p>i agree with both altema's posts.</p>
<p>i feel like cc is much easier than high school - i know i worked a lot less than i did in high school</p>
<p>Engineering isn't all about bad curves and ugly grades when you are approaching your final ~10 courses.</p>
<p>I think people can generally do very poorly and still get Bs. The grading (if that's all you care about) is just somewhat stiff when you start upper division courses. :rolleyes:</p>
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<p>Not always!
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<p>sorry for any misconceptions, but i am most likely going to transfer from UCSD. I took CC courses so i was just using that as a reference. I heard UCSD engineering was really hard. I looked at the UCLA statistics and saw that the average accepted applicant for my major is a 3.7. Is that possible at UCSD for engineering? Or would i have a better chance of getting the 3.7 and transferring from UCI?</p>
<p>Why don't you just go to a CC? It'll be easier to transfer that way.</p>
<p>If I were you and you REALLY wanted to goto UCLA, I would attend CC first. Landing a good GPA at another UC is not going to be as easy as a CC. UCI and UCSD may be ranked lower than UCLA in various aspects, but that does not mean it's going to be cake to get a 3.7+.</p>
<p>uhhh....the curves help a lot. In one of my math classes, the average at the end was a 50% or so. Imagine if there was no curve......</p>
<p>..so? at a CC, you don't need a curve. also, a curve is not completely determined by the caliber of students, but by the professor. there're plenty of sub-50% curves in Irvine, and i'm sure there're plenty at Riverside and Santa Cruz.</p>
<p>and even if you'd want to argue about quality of students, it's not like those in SD are significantly dumber than those over here. so no, there wouldn't be any substantial benefit from curves one way or another.</p>