Community College transfer-- I do not know what to do.

Transfer Students
1

Hello,

I am a math major from a community college, and will have all classes completed for all UC’s and CSU’s by this spring.

I am just confused on what to do after this. Where do I go? I will be accepted to every UC besides UCLA due to not completing one class and UC Berkeley is a 50/50 shot (I have a 4.0 gpa).

the schools I applied to:
CSUSM
SDSU
CSUSB
UCSD
UC Berkeley
UC Riverside
UCLA
UC San Diego
UC Santa Barbara
UC Davis
UC Irvine

  • Note I live in a place in southern California called Temecula. Also, I do have a car to commute, but I am relatively poor, so moving to a place like Berkeley, etc. would be hard without taking a loan out-- I do not want to get a loan, but would the loan be worth it?

Would going to a brand name school like UC Berkeley, UCSD have such a bigger impact in my life than going to a school like CSUSM or SDSU or UCR? Note: I at first thought that I wanted to get a PhD. But after being in college for almost 3 years now, I have came to the conclusion I want to get a job right after bachelor’s degree, make decent money and live well-- then maybe go to graduate school. PhD is pretty much out of the picture-- I do not think the benefit outweighs the cost.

I have about 3 months to make my decision and it is stressing me out; I have heard stories of students going to CSU’s and not being able to find a job straight out of graduation; I have a friend the same major as me who is about to graduate from UCR, and he has know job interviews set up. I then look at datum provided from Berkeley and I see many of the math majors going to do great things, black rost analyst, software engineering for google, amazon, etc. And I wonder if I can do that? But then I know going to Berkeley would be a risk 1) because I go to community college, it is easier here, and I do not know if I am as smart as the kids are at Berkeley. 2) I fear if I go there lowering my GPA would diminish my chances of getting a decent job or going to graduate school.

UCSD-- is a 140 mile roundtrip commute worth it 3 times a week (maybe more)? I live 70 miles away from UCSD.
UC Santa Barbara-- same scenario as UC Berkeley, but I hear academics is less rigorous there.
UC Irvine-- same dilemma as UCI; 70 miles back and forth.
UC Davis-- Same scenario as UC Berkeley and UC Santa Barbara, but less rigorous
UC Riverside-- 20 miles away from campus – feasible commute; but is the academics there good? Would I be able to get a job after graduating there? Is there enough places for me to network and get an internship there?
CSUSB-- 40 miles away from campus-- feasible commute, but who knows about CSUSB outside of San Beranindino?
SDSU-- great public state school, but again, 70 miles away, is that a feasible commute? No.
CSUSM-- 40 miles away, nice campus, I feel I would do well here, but would I be able to network, land an internship, and get a job? My buddy goes here and he is about to graduate from political science, and he has no jobs available for him, and he is pretty much forced to go to law school; I am so against this-- I believe that with a bachelor’s degree, I should be able to get a job-- and a decent one; I do not want to research or stay in school for 10 years to be in a competitive market of academia, where it is cutthroat, and my job search are limited due to my PhD. I just want a nice normal life-- and I am sorry but I cannot imagine studying and researching math for the rest of my life-- do not get me wrong I love math and logical reasoning, but as far as researching goes, I know that is something I do not want to do.

My community college:
A lot of people have told me community college is easy-- especially university people on reddit, etc. And perhaps it is for good reason. In all of my classes, I have had an easy time besides physics and computer science courses-- I am not the next great mathematician or beautiful mind, I just do my work, study, review, and take academics seriously. However, a lot of my friends are going to UCI, and they claim UCR is a joke of a school, same with CSUSM, CSUSB. My brother graduated from Berkeley in '14 for business, and he is already making six figures, and that is nice, but do I have to go to a big school like that to get a job like he did? He is working in New York, and companies wanted him from Texas, Florida, New York, the Bay, etc.

What if I fail? What if I do go to Berkeley, and I try my hardest, but I end up short?

Will companies only hire the students from the top UC’s?

Will companies ignore job applications from CSU commuter schools?

Will companies even consider an applicant with a mathematics major? Now days majors are so specific and technical, math seems kind of obsolete.

2

It does not matter where you go to school as long as you graduate.

Financially, you will be limited on what you can take in loans.

If you are currently using Calgrants, this should be able to pay for some of your costs, but you need to know that the Bay area and Westwood areas are very expensive to live in.

Well you would think that such a thought would be reasonable. But it is not. There are a lot of students working in jobs that have nothing to do with their degrees. People eek out a living because they chose a major that has no demand.

My nephew majored in petroleum engineering at a tech school. He chose it because of the salaries. He made up a scenario indicating how much he would be making by a certain number of years. Nope, did NOT happen. As luck would have it, the jobs died. It took him two years to find a job that has NOTHING to do with PET Eng.

You need a plan. No one is going to hand anything to you. You need to look at the Bureau of Labor statistics and look at which fields are growing and the predicted stability. Speak with your current professors and ask them about what fields are being requested by employers.
YOU do not want to be saddled with debt if you can’t find a job. There are people that have graduated from the big schools who also cannot find employment; it is not just the mid-tier schools.

3

What is your major?

4

Math, and I might double major in comp sci.

TY for the response aunt bea.

5

Companies do not ignore students from commuter CSUs but, for you, it sounds like UCR is a no-brainer…

6

UCR looks like the obvious choice if you do not want to move to where the school is. Those other commutes seem like a lot of trouble, especially driving in southern California traffic.

But wait until all admission and financial aid offers are on the table before deciding.

7

Deleted duplicate

8

There’s a lot to unpack here.

First of all, forget about “Brand names”. Chances are, you’re not going to have an employer who really cares about where your degree is from unless they went there or you’re from Harvard. People will try to debate me on this, but it’s true for the most part.

  1. Berkeley is extremely expensive, you're correct. People pay anywhere between $750 (far from campus)-$1000 (10 minute walk from campus) per month to live there. On campus housing is overcrowded, too. It is definitely not the school for everyone, it's big and impersonal. But there's lots of opportunities in terms of clubs, research, etc. But now I'm on a tangent.
  2. Even if you went to CSUSM or anything, you can still get a phD. Others have given you advice about a "decent job" and I'd suggest you meet with a counselor at your CC about that if you want to talk about your options more.
  3. I live with UC Berkeley students, and not all of them have a great work ethic or are doing amazing things right now. Like I said, it's a huge school with lots of different people. Getting a 4.0 is not easy, and a lot of people have transferred successfully to Berkeley. I can't speak for math majors at Berkeley, but the upper-division classes are much better for the STEM majors I live with. They are not finding them as difficult as the "filter" courses you probably won't have to take.
  4. UCSD is out. Do not drive 70 miles and back 3x a week. That's a huge strain on your car, gas is not cheap, and your life will probably be more stressful. Commuting that far denies you of opportunities.
  5. Yes it's less rigorous but again, UCSB is not the fit for everyone. I don't know about it the way I know Berkeley, but if you're serious about this go visit. You need to find the right fit, not just for the prestige/GPA.
  6. UCI is out for the same reasons as UCSD.
  7. UCD sounds like it's out, unless you visit and like it. Davis (and Sacramento in general) is a lot more affordable than Berkeley, Isla Vista, etc but it's not the school for everyone. You seem to be leaning towards southern california schools anyway.
  8. UCR sounds good. 20 miles is a good commute. Have you visited? Again, and I cannot stress this enough, you need to go with the FIT. F-i-t. Your college is what you make it, not what gets given to you. You can network and create opportunity for yourself.
  9. CSUSB is out. 40 miles is too far. Gas, strain on car, time, etc.
  10. SDSU is out, too.
  11. CSUSM is out, too. But like I said, college is what you make it. Going to Berkeley or Stanford or UPenn would not suddenly make jobs available to you.
  12. "I believe that with a bachelor's degree, I should be able to get a job-- and a decent one; " Yeah, a lot of people feel that way, too. My older sister graduated from USC as a business major and went to UCLA for law school/business school. She did extremely well there and had a hard time finding a job, despite having internships and whatnot. It's just life, I don't know what to tell you. Lucky for you, being a math major gives you a lot of options. Perhaps you could enroll in a credential program (1 yr) and teach high school math? Maybe you could enroll concurrently? There are options, but going to one school vs. the other won't magically fix them.

“What if I fail? What if I do go to Berkeley, and I try my hardest, but I end up short?”

Failure is something that you yourself bring on to yourself. There’s plenty of resources to make sure that doesn’t happen. You will not get a 4.0 most likely, but there are a lot of ways to support yourself. What are your goals? What do you really want to do? You need to make a plan right now with concrete steps to achieve them, something more than “I want a job with my BA”. What is short? You are not your brother, it sounds like. 6 figure jobs don’t correlate with nice, quiet lives usually.

“Will companies only hire the students from the top UC’s?”

You and I know that’s not true. Don’t be silly. It doesn’t matter where you get your degree, it matters what you do with it.

“Will companies ignore job applications from CSU commuter schools?”

There’s so many companies out there with so many different qualifications. Again, don’t be silly.

“Will companies even consider an applicant with a mathematics major? Now days majors are so specific and technical, math seems kind of obsolete.”

For most companies, having a degree is what counts. A math major is probably better suited at math related jobs but a degree is a degree.

9

Pure math may not have much major-specific job demand, but careful choice of electives in applied areas can make math more applicable to job types like:

  • finance and actuarial (add statistics, economics, and finance courses)
  • operations research and logistics (add operations research, industrial engineering, statistics courses)
  • data science (add CS and statistics courses)
  • computing (add CS courses)
  • teaching high school math (need teaching credential)
10

Personally, I disagree that it doesn’t matter. I don’t know too much about what you work as with a math major, but anyways here are some stats from U.S. News regarding salary:

Mathematics
UCB: $68,500
UCR: $58,800

Applied Mathematics
UCB: $71,900
UCR: $56,000

So in general it’s fair to say that no matter what you’re gonna do UCB is gonna give you $10000 more. If you want more accurate numbers, you can try to find an employment report for those schools. Essentially, you just have to calculate if the additional salary is going to outweigh the higher cost of attendance.

11

please post a link to the salary survey…

I suspect the difference largely driven by an individual’s behavior and would expect that it narrows over time. The typical Berk grad worked harder in HS or CC and had higher expectations (their own or placed on them) and, in my experience is a little more self promotional than the typical UCR grad. That foundation is tough to shake and it shows up as hard work - which tends to get rewarded by employers . While it is true that some companies focus their recruiting on a select few colleges, two years after you graduate, no one will care. No for profit business is going to pay an extra $10k if they aren’t seeing the value in return, the name on your diploma isn’t what delivers that value. You earn that by showing up early, staying late and beating people expectations of you. I say that as someone who went to a CC and CSU and has hired lots of people over many years,

For this kid, UCB would bury him in debt so, it isn’t a viable option. He’s also got a 4.0 GPA, which probably won’t get him in anyhow. Don’t leave him with the impression that going to a school like UCR will hamper his career potential. It is simply false. Don’t believe me - go to Linked-In and see where the UCR grads work and what kind of jobs they have.

12

correction - with a 4.0 as a transfer - he does have a shot at UCB - i was thinking freshman …
sorry

13

Thank you for all of your thoughtful replies.

I really appreciate that there is a forum here dedicated to help students transitioning in college/university. I will update you once I get accepted and my financial aid packages are given, then I will go from there.

14

@NCalRent It’s U.S. News (like I said) there is no link lol You need an account and then you can see it.

15

Anyways, here is something to look at that backs up the US News numbers: https://career.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/pdf/Survey/2017Math.pdf