<p>Hi everyone!</p>
<p>This is my first post on College Confidential! It is nice to meet all of you and I'm looking forward to the conversations ahead!</p>
<p>I am in the graduating class of 2014 and want to plan my road to UC Berkeley. I live in California and my plan is to go to a community college first and then transfer to Berkeley. The dilemma though is that my city only has 1 community college and with a population of 250k, classes are impacted. The complaint current students there have is that they aren't able to enroll in classes they want and it takes them longer to earn the 60 transferrable credits.</p>
<p>I want to avoid either case. I am currently in search of a different community college out of city. I am looking for an area where the demographics, standard of living, recreation, and opportunities are most suited for a college student. So I would like your advice on 2 things: 1, I would like to know in your opinion if this is feasible if the financial support I will recieve from my parents are minimal and I must generate the income to pay for bills, personal expense, tuition, etc. on grants, financial aid, and as a working student; and 2, what community colleges, cities, and places in mind do you have that I can start looking in to.</p>
<p>I understand that moving to a community college that is not near my home will be more costly, but the probable consequences of taking my chances at my local one and not recieving the classes I need are much higher. Please let me know what you think!</p>
<p>Thanks for taking your time!</p>
<p>Stephen</p>
<p>Would you mind naming the community college? Some cc’s like Saddleback College in Orange County have honors programs that give priority registration to their best students, thus minimizing the problem of not being able to get classes. </p>
<p>The unfortunate reality is, the budget cuts have affected all of the California CCs. I have uncles that teach at two wildly different California CCs and both report the same thing. So do people from my graduating class who went to one of three local CCs by my house.</p>
<p>Santa Monica college is great but it will probably be costing concerning your situation. Orange coast college and irvine valley college are all great as well and I know many people from both who just recently got into both UCLA and Cal. Probably lies in the fact that this is California and these JCs are in Orange County.</p>
<p>If you move some place to attend a CC, check [Welcome</a> to ASSIST](<a href=“http://www.assist.org%5DWelcome”>http://www.assist.org) to see how well each CC covers the prerequisites to your major at your target UC/CSU (and then check the CC to see that the listed courses are actually offered and you can get into them). Of course, some majors are generally easier to find courses for than others (e.g. math and history tend to be easier than engineering, since engineering tends to have more courses, more of which tend to be school-specific).</p>
<p>Note that a CC near a UC/CSU is more likely to model its courses on those at the UC/CSU. For example, Laney and Diablo Valley tend to cover UC Berkeley courses relatively well, while Cuesta tends to cover Cal Poly SLO courses relatively well.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the replies!</p>
<p>Hey StephenD, I did pretty much what you’re aiming to do. Moved out, worked, went to a (local) CC, and am transferring to UC Berkeley this fall. Most CCs are impacted however Santa Monica College has one of the highest transfer rates to Cal and UCLA. It’s a private school so it’ll cost more but they also have university apartments that are convienent. I went to El Camino College, which also has high transfer rates, but it super impacted unless you can get priority registration (not that hard to do). Both of them have honors programs that give you priority to UCLA, etc. Feel free the message me if you have any questions. </p>
<p>As for moving out, it’s tough. Get use to being humble.</p>
<p>StephenD, how far is the next closest college that you could commute to? I had a similar problem in getting all my classes at my local college, so I commuted about 45 minutes to another cc for the classes that I was unable to get at my college. Maybe that’s a feasible option? Also, mike011x, I think you’re mistaken on Santa Monica College being private. It’s a public community college, which is why it has the matriculation agreements with the UC’s on assist.org.</p>
<p>If you plan on residing in Los Angeles, I highly recommend you attend one of the LACCD district ( Los ANgeles city college ,East los angels college, valley college). My primary school was valley college. However like you mentioned there were many times where classes were limited and impossible to get. The best thing about LACCD district is that you can use the other school to your advantages. For example, I needed to take art history for spring but Valley College was full, so I ventured out to East LA college to enroll myself in Art history. Trust me, this will benefit you on the long run, compared to SMC, PCC, or any independent districts. Sure SMC as a great transfer rate, but if you can pull off the GPA, who is stopping you? Goodluck. </p>
<p>If you are concerned about the commute, all of these classes offer online classes, therefore you can simply just enroll and do everything online!</p>