<p>Yeah, the money thing is really wrong.</p>
<p>I actually think she made her rant and exited the building. Oh well, just goes to show that people tend to only attune to things they want to hear (and is why therapists are so prevalent 
)</p>
<p>Welcome to the world of SDSU! It is a wonderful school but it is also an incredibly large state institution full of different levels of bureaucracy. I have read some suggestions about your son changing his major. Please investigate this option thoroughly before you advise him to do so. State has many impacted and very competitive majors. If one changes his major, especially as a sophomore/junior, there is an excellent possibility that he will not be allowed to transfer back in (especially in the College of Business).</p>
<p>Your son needs to thoroughly review his transcript to make sure that there aren’t any errors and that his transcript matches what SDSU has on file for him. SDSU’s admissions office has had a tough few months. In April, in error, they denied some community college transfers and in June, they apparently rescinded a few hundred acceptances by mistake. Most of these situations were reversed. If there is an error, they will often listen but it does take a lot of persistence and sometimes pleading. Most of the employees truly want to help the students but with over 50,000 applications per year, tens of thousands of enrolled students, and the financial cutbacks at the school, they seem to be very overwhelmed right now and have made some mistakes.</p>
<p>Another idea might be to make an appointment to talk with a guidance counselor at your local community college. Perhaps the cc your son might attend if this does not get reversed. SDSU has strong relationships with many of our cc’s and, due to the large amount of cc transfers to SDSU each year, the guidance counselors of these cc’s know how to work through State’s system and many are strong advocates for their students. Maybe if you both met with one of the cc counselors, explained the situation, and analyzed your son’s transcripts, even if this situation cannot be reversed, there might be some other options available for your son.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, since SDSU is such a large public university, this will not be the first time your son will face something like this situation. The students have to be very proactive in handling any problem. You are teaching him well by promptly dealing with this issue and guiding him through this process. On the bright side, though I had to go through similar emotional roller coasters during my time there, I had an awesome experience and remember my college years with fond memories.</p>
<p>Perhaps he can get an agreement to enter on probation and earn the extra 4/100’s of a point by the end of the first semester. It doesn’t hurt to ask, right?</p>
<p>If there is no way to get him actuall “in”, check what LaurenTheMom said and see if there is a way he can be taking classes there as a non-matriculated student. The sports would be a problem though.</p>
<p>I like the idea of staying in under open enrollment. One of my DDs needed a particular senior class at the local public. It was to be transferred back to her university so she could graduate without returning to the area (she was being stalked and her school graciously allowed her to take those couple of last classes from afar, but it was not easy in any part of the situation to get this creative thinking happening at two publics)</p>
<p>DD could not enroll, she had to take the open enrollment course and that was very complicated with it being a senior small, usually full class. We found the amazing person at each campus to help us navigate the system outside the box. In each case before any exceptions were offered DD really had to prove herself worthy of that privilege.</p>
<p>No one but the registrar would know she was open enrollment. Could your son go there, be there, get in to the routine there and have some sort of ‘deal’ with admissions that he prove himself this fall and then would be transferred into ‘regular’ school.</p>
<p>Many times when dealing with the system, you must show them how simple it could be to think out side the box, but do not ask them to get there on their own, you must do the creative thinking.</p>
<p>Is the issue here the requirement for admission to an upper-division major ([SDSU</a> Office of Admissions, GPA Requirements for the Major](<a href=“http://arweb.sdsu.edu/es/admissions/res_impactedgpa.html]SDSU”>http://arweb.sdsu.edu/es/admissions/res_impactedgpa.html)), or a cut-off for all transfer admission? If it is the requirement for admission to a major, the only majors that are currently out seem to be business, journalism, and TV. So couldn’t the admissions office be asked to handle the transfer into a different major, for which the GPA requirements are met by a 2.86?</p>
<p>Quant: a couple people have suggested what you are talking about (wondering if the son was transferring into an impacted major and could possibly change majors to maintain acceptance) and a few posters think the original poster has “disappeared.” Hopefully the OP is still reading because there have been several very good suggestions how to approach the situation.</p>
<p>See if he can take classes through the SDSU Extension program or take classes at SDSU as a concurrent CC student. A kid I know is enrolled at a CC, but is taking her CC classes at a UC campus, taught by UC professors, with UC students. For all intents and purposes, no one would know she is not a UC student unless they saw her transcripts. Might be worth a call to the local CC counselor.</p>
<p>Modadun: WRT to taking it to the media – in California, this isn’t news. Thousands of students are being impacted by the budget crisis and by the state university system being more rigid this year because of budget cuts. It’s horrible for everyone involved, but it’s not that there’s some terrible injustice being done to this student that is worse than that of everyone else in the system. It’s just business as usual – UC’s and CSU’s are very strict about their requirements, there is no gray area, there’s no exceptions, etc.</p>
<p>Quant: My understanding from my own experience with the CSU application process is that you are NOT able to do that, explicitly, that the website that handles all CSU applications specifies that if you do not meet the requirements for admission to your program of choice, you cannot switch programs after the fact; you have to reapply, which means waiting a year. As others have explained, there’s no application for Spring, because the CSU system has closed Spring admits. The system is very rigid and does not for variations or exceptions.</p>
<p>Thanks for the explanation, TrinSF. That system is surprisingly inflexible. I think the idea of “student as consumer” can be taken too far, but I’m surprised that the California universities do so little to accommodate their applicants–must be the effects of an overabundance of available students. Other regions of the country do not have this same situation–certainly not at the SDSU level.</p>
<p>I was just thinking that taking orientation money and essentially humiliating a student in pubic might be particularly harsh, even in consideration of the rules and an uncaring system. It’s also that while “it’s nothing new,” it certainly is news when you put a human face on it and not just a general overview. Not to mention, losing a parent and the rest, all while trying to hold your head above water seems to be particularly praise-worthy.</p>
<p>And while I am sure it is a can of worms, a pandora’s box or both… But if all those who attended the state supported schools actually paid taxes in some way, perhaps the system wouldn’t be in nearly as bad of shape as it is - so much so that a story like this isn’t newsworthy at all.</p>
<p>QuantMech: Oh, it’s actually better/worse, depending on how you view it. The entire California school system is integrated into the public university system, as a sort of giant conveyor belt. The UC/CSU system has giant influence on what is taught at the high school level, and students must take a particular curriculum in order to be considered. But most public HS’s in CA do not provide that curriculum to the majority of their students, thus “locking them out” of the university system. CA is also very particular in requiring that students take some core required courses in CA, and again, exceptions are rare/difficult to obtain. (For example, though I have professional writing credits and upper division English coursework at other universities, I have had to take several basic English courses because the CA requirement is for ONLY X course ONLY taken in CA, ONLY taken within past 5 years, etc.) </p>
<p>I think the problem is largely that the CA system is so big, and the state is so involved in it that so much of the process is regulated at the state level, with very little room for schools themselves to be flexible. It’s both amazingly affordable and difficult to navigate.</p>
<p>Modagunn: I guess what I’m saying is that there’s a human face, and it’s thousands of people strong, and everyone already knows that. For example, the CSU board voted a 20 percent fee increase on July 21, effective for fall. Students like me were notified of this July 28. For a full time student at my CSU, that’s about $500-600 in new fees. However, there’s going to be no increase in the state grant programs that help low income students with these fees, so thousands of people like me at the lowest income level have just gotten bills that may cause dropping out of school. Likewise, thousands of HS students who have been working towards college with the expectation that there was a space and scholarships for them in the state system may be denied next year, because of enrollment cuts and possible cuts in the programs they’ve counted on. </p>
<p>All of this stuff is basically daily news in CA, part of an ongoing nightmare of budget crisis we’re having.</p>
<p>SDSU has about 35,000 students. There are hundreds in this situation every term. It is so overcrowded they have contemplated stopping taking students for a year. They tell students to expect it to take 5-6 years to graduate. Students routinely take needed classes at CCs and other colleges because they can’t get them there. Students know they need to be vigilant or they’ll never get out. How can a system like this be flexible? The system is such a mess it’s hard to think it will ever be fixed.</p>
<p>
I don’t think SDSU was being unduly harsh and that the real issue was that the student firstly didn’t keep his GPA up to the required level (I understand he had challenges in the last year but that’s not really SDSU’s issue) and secondly, either didn’t check the SDSU transfer admissions GPA requirement for his major or ignored it and just hoped it wouldn’t be a problem. I found the GPA requirements on their website in about 10 seconds. It’s hard to imagine that there are many transfer students who aren’t aware there’s a GPA requirement for the college and possibly the major. </p>
<p>SDSU gets apps and transcripts from many thousands students and can’t be expected to respond to them all instantly - especially if they might be suffering from admin staff cuts and furloughs. In addition I wouldn’t be surprised if the people processing transcripts and the people handling orientation fees are not the same.</p>
<p>It’d be nice if SDSU and all the other large universities could provide the individual attention to respond to issues like this but it really is ultimately up to the student to do their homework, understand the requirements, and either meet those requirements or if there was an issue with that, contact the admissions office and find out what the best plan B is given the failure to meet the easy to determine requirements.</p>
<p>Yup, one of the things that’s true here is that as terrible as this is for the OP and her son, the CSU application website and everything you get every step of the process tells you over and over that your admission is only conditional until your last transcripts are accepted and that there are no exceptions. I was notified my transfer admission was rescinded two weeks before I started at a CSU, because my final transcript had just been recieved and I had taken one of courses required for admission in Fall, not Summer. (And the Rules say that all required courses for transfer must be taken two semesters before transfer, etc.) Luckily for me, I had applied for admission by Adult Exception and could prove that, so the rule didn’t apply to me – but it was a close one.</p>
<p>The process is awful and terrible and punitive and sometimes obstructionist, but they do put considerable effort into making sure you <em>know</em> the rules.</p>
<p>TrinSF:</p>
<p>Your issue seems a little more obscure than the one of meeting the basic GPA requirement. I’m glad you were able to arrive at a remedy and I hope the OP’s son is able to reach a fairly reasonable remedy as well.</p>
<p>u<em>u</em>d: I think my point is that they’re very clear about the rules, and the applicant has to stay on top of the process and know what’s going to be required/not required. In my case, had I not obsessively prepared and made sure I understood the rules, I would not have known to cite them. I had to fax a page from the rulebook, so to speak, to resolve the situation. I hope the OP’s family is able to work it out, too.</p>