Concerns about going from UC to CC to UC again?

Hi, I’m coming in as second-year CC student and I’ve gotten a great GPA of a 4.0 this far at my current school. I’m looking to transfer to UCSC, UCI, UCSD and Cal. However, I attended UC Davis a couple of years back for a year and I received horrible grades. I was going through a rough time in my life being majorly depressed, and left UCD with a 2.45 GPA.

I was stupid and didn’t realize until recently that I needed to include my old UCD grades. I’m looking to apply to Santa Cruz for TAG at the moment and I found that my current stats are as follows:

  • ASSIST-Certified Course Units: 37.67/56.50
  • UC Course Units: 19.33/29.00 with a GPA of 2.35.

My overall GPA according to the planner/wesbite is a 3.40. I’m freaking out over a few things.

  • Will I be considered a UC-to-UC transfer or a CC-to-UC transfer (since I heard my status will affect financial aid)?
  • Am I going to have to be wary of the amount of classes I need to take at my CC from now on? Like, how many more units would I actually need to take before reaching unit cap for transferring to a UC?
  • Will my past experience at Davis reflect poorly in the eye of admissions officers? I really bounced back from my downward spiral since attending CC and hope they could take that into account. At Davis, I was taking classes for a major I loathed. I started over at my CC taking classes solely for the new major I want to get into. I would have prefered not to list my Davis grades but it seems mandatory.
  • I’ve heard about academic renewal and is it possible for me to do that with units from a UC if I wanna get into another UC? Can I re-take some classes at one of the UCs I might transfer to?
  • Since the courses from my first UC seem to be taken into account for TAG, does that mean my GPA won’t reset and I’ll be coming into whatever school with a 2.35?

Sorry for the huge number of questions. I will try to contact admissions officers from my desired transfer schools as well as an academic counselor ASAP, but I’d appreciate any responses I could get from others here.

Oh, I forgot to mention that I’m looking to apply as a CogSci major at all of my chosen schools.

So many questions.

They calculate cumulative GPA for both colleges.

You need to add the UCD units on top of all CCC units, which will cap at 70 if you go over that amount. (So 70 + 19.33, or 55 + 19.33, etc.)
The schools you mentioned have ceiling caps at 90 semester so you should be ok if you stay below 70 at the CCC.

You will be CCC—> UC.

I don’t think you can do AR for the UC courses. You need to check and anyway they need to be low grades.

They do look at upward trends, but you still need to be in the mid-GPA-range for the best outcome. You can look here:
https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/infocenter/transfers-major

Just know that your UC GPA will transfer to the new UC whereas your CCC GPA/Cum. GPA will not.