<p>OP, have you tried visiting the ‘Transfer’ or ‘UC Transfer’ sub-forums here on College Confidential? They may be able to provide you good feedback as to your quote above.</p>
<p>I wanted to mention that I think I’ve heard that starting next Fall (2013), UCSD will join the likes of UCB and UCLA and will discontinue their TAG program. You should google that though and again ask those in the UC Transfer forum about that. You may not be able to TAG to UCSD from a CA CC after this year. That doesn’t mean you won’t have a shot of acceptance, it just means there will be no contractual guarantee for you, unfortunately.</p>
<p>If this is too scary of an idea for you and you want to ensure you go to a higher-tier UC, then you should go ahead with UCSD (which is a great school) and maybe look into SLO too. Otherwise, if you think you can continue to apply yourself, then you will still have wonderful transfer options from CC, but of course there are no certainties. Finances should also be taken into account here. An undergrad UCSD degree is great, but not if you and your family have to borrow astronomical amounts to get it. Best of luck! I know decision time is on the doorstep.</p>
<p>If you haven’t made your decision yet, I have two things to say.
4-year public CA universities are encouraged to admit transfer applicants. If you look at the transfer statistics for UCLA you can compare your gpa with the avg gpa applicants and applied. Just google: UCLA transfer stats/statistics.</p>
<p>On the other hand. Right now is a really bad time to be a CA community college student. CSUs aren’t admitting spring enrollments and the community colleges are crowded enough. I tried to get a summer today and all the GE courses were taken. I have priority registration on top of that.
Luckily, the math and science chair director schedules our classes so they don’t interfere. But I found the biggest stress about CC is filling those easy A general Ed classes to balance the cal and physics.</p>
<p>I believe (OPINION) that a transfer gpa of 3.8 is a better chance for admission than a HS gpa of same value. Earning gpa on the other hand is another whole story.</p>
<p>I still haven’t made my decision yet. I have sent my SIR to UCSD and Cal Poly just to be safe though.
What does it mean that the CSUs aren’t accepting Spring enrollment? Can’t people just apply in the Fall then? And do you think that the UCs will ever freeze transfers?
And if I were to go to community, I would enroll in the Honors Program, so I get priority registration. But you said that you get priority registration, but didn’t manage to get the classes you wanted. Doesn’t that kind of negate the point of “priority” registration?
I also emailed UCLA’s engineering school and they said that the transfer rate into their computer science and engineering is about 15, which is really how. However, they also mentioned that they have not turned down any applicants who got a 4.0 in ALL their required classes. So this brings me to the next question, is getting a 4.0 super difficult to get in CC?
Additionally, since I’m not dead on about what I want to major (and I have heard how tough Computer Science classes are, and how many people hate them), can I switch majors in CC without it racking up the units? Like, say if I take computer engineering classes and find out that I absolutely hate them and this is not what I want to be doing my entire life, would I able to just kind of “erase” it from my transcript? I don’t know if that makes sense…But thanks for any feedback!</p>
It means that CSUs are trying to curb their high enrollment numbers mainly due to budget cuts, so they decided to tank Spring enrollment offers for transfers. Transferring into a CSU or UC will most likely not freeze outright, but you may see the acceptance rates go down to, again, attempt to curb high enrollment when the money is not there to support it. Freshman rates will also go down in correlation.</p>
<p>
Again, this may be an effect of budget cuts. Even with priority registration, one thing can happen:
A LOT of other people also have priority registration (Honors, Athletes, Veterans, disabled students, etc). Inducing that with the combination of cutting classes and all of those with priority registration may get bottle-necked into the few required classes that are offered in any given term. This will differ from CC campus to CC campus. So, it may be wise to ask some current students of your local CC if it is an issue there or not.</p>
<p>
And Stanford has an overall transfer acceptance rate of 1-2%. These are just selective schools. Getting a 4.0 in CC will depend partly on the individual, but IMO, mostly on the preparation taken to attend CC in general. The UC transfer sub-forum here on College Confidential is an invaluable resource in a lot of ways to attain as high a GPA as you can. They often suggest ways (and there was a recent thread there addressing this if you search for it) to excel in CC, such as using Rate My Professor and utilizing other transfer course help websites. It’s probably not super easy to get a 4.0 anywhere, but is possible to do, certainly.</p>
<p>
In CC, you academic lifestyle will revolve around “UC/CSU transferrable courses”. These courses are outlined in articulation agreements with just about every CA CC on Assist. So, if early on (key phrase there) you determine that you don’t like you intended major, then you can determine if those courses you’ve taken so far are UC transferrable. If they are, then they may count towards other general education requirements (called IGETC or Breadth) or even other major pre-requisites depending on if the major you are trying to switch to is closely related to the first one you intended to pursue. However, if 1 1/2 years into CC you decide you want to switch to a completely unrelated major, then it would prove difficult to transfer in a timely fashion (2-3 years). The good thing about transferring from a CCC is that as long as you have received all of your college credits from a CCC, there is no unit “cap” on transfer (won’t be held against you if you are applying for transfer with 150+ qtr credits), though only a certain amount will be granted to counts towards your new school’s degree after the transfer has taken place.</p>
<p>I think you should go for UCSD. You could always get a part time job to offset some of the costs. However, if you end up going with the CC, I’d completely understand.</p>
<p>Yea, I think I’m just going to go to community college. I mean, I can’t deny that UCSD is amazing and everything, but I just don’t see myself going there. This is a pretty big risk I’m taking, but in the end, if it gives me a second chance to the school that I want to go to, then why not? I don’t want to go to UCSD and look back in my life and wonder what COULD’VE happened if I had taken this route. Life is too short to not make your dreams a reality! All I can do is hope for the best, and expect the worst :)</p>
<p>i recommend a cc because unlike csu or uc the ge classes will have 30-60 students… usually 40 or less. compared to a uc or csu which can range all the way up to 500 for a lecture. probably more depending where you go. and ccs are not embarrassing when you saved 20k from not going to a university your frosh and sophmore year! i live in la so i cannot advise about any of the ccs in your area. but ya look at the class offerings and apply now! even if you change your mind, you can really apply to multiply ccs get in and maekky our choice later. they are not strict with applying and stuff.</p>
This is mainly based on the fact that CCs have a lower class cap because they don’t have huge auditoriums to conduct classes, just the cheaper smaller basic classroom(and thus must adhere to safety and fire codes). This is good because it’s true that you’d be hard pressed to find any GE class nearing the 60 students mark, but this could be bad because that means overall there are less students able to take that class in a given term.</p>
<p>For example, UC or CSU “A” has 6 class times in an auditoriums that fit 150 students each for a Math GE requirement. That means for any given term 900 students will be able to take that class. Now CC “A” has 15 class times in a traditional classroom that fit 45 students each. That means for any given term 675 students will be able to take that class - just about 2/3 the overall capacity of students that the UC or CSU accommodated.</p>
<p>The trick is in ensuring that you will get registration for those CC GE classes by taking advantage of their priority registration policies.</p>
<p>ya there are less sections. i just finished lacc in los angeles, and ive never actually had a problem adding or registering for classes. although ive had really good luck adding in lotterys, etc.</p>