<p>I'm attending SFSU next year for accounting/finance and I was wondering how hard it was to go from a cal state to a higher end UC for graduate school. What exactly do they look for?
What kind've GPA do schools like Cal, UCLA, and UCSD want?
Would you say transferring to a UC is a good choice? I've been searching for articulation agreements between CSU's and UC's and I can't seem to find any.</p>
<p>Depends on what your are aiming for. Business school is dependent on work experience and grad school is dependent on research. I am pretty sure they will take those into account first plus GPA/GRE/GMAT before they even think about what school you went to. </p>
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<p>If you are looking to transfer as a junior and NOT GRAD SCHOOL (after you get your bachelors), then going to a CSU would be a lot less favorable than going to a community college for your first two years.</p>
<p>I would say that transferring from a CSU to a UC in your Junior year is extremely difficult. Last year UCLA accepted about 35% of the students who were transfer applicants from CCCs but less than 4% of students attempting to transfer from CSUs. </p>
<p>The situation for graduate school is probably not as clear cut as undergraduate transfers where the UCs clearly state it is their mission to accept as many transfer applicants as possible from CCCs, however it is still not likely to be favorable for CSU graduates. When the Master Plan for Public Higher Education in California was set up it was envisioned that the UCs would be “research” institutions preparing undergraduates to enter graduate and professional schools upon earning their bachelors degree while the CSUs were intended to be “teaching” institutions that would prepare graduates to directly enter the work force upon obtaining their bachelors degree. The graduate schools of the UCs, particularly the upper tier ones like Berkeley and UCLA will receive applications not only from graduates of the UCs but from colleges and universities considered “research” institutions from all over the country. Under these circumstances, the graduate schools at the UCs are likely to give a low priority to CSU graduates who the UCs likely view as not having been educated to do research which is the objective of graduate study. CSU graduates are most likely going to be seen as inferior candidates for graduate study at the UCs not only in comparison to UC graduates but also bachelors degree holders from most out of state Universities as well.</p>
<p>Students at CSUs who have aspirations to go to graduate school at a UC should try to take advantage of whatever meager opportunities there are to do research at their CSUs to counter the likely negative perception of their potential for graduate study that most UCs are likely to hold of them.</p>
<p>This is the second post where I’ve seen ^Lemaitre1 blabbing on about how CSUs are “teaching” schools, and thus the students are “inferior.” It is ridiculous how blatantly wrong he/she is.</p>
<p>I hope nobody listens to this person, and they never do any real harm. I have no bias towards the CSU system, I am a student at UCLA, but I cannot stand such falsity. I would be pretty surprised if any of the CSUs DO NOT have research taking place on campus. </p>
<p>As I said in a previous reply to one of his posts, San Diego State University has been ranked the TOP small research university in the NATION for the past four years. (It is a small research institutions because it has less than 14 PhD-granting programs).</p>
<p>Curious about CSU-wide research?</p>
<p>–Here’s the CSU Biotechnology research website.</p>
<p>[California</a> State University Program for Education and Research in Biotechnology (CSUPERB) | CSU](<a href=“http://www.calstate.edu/csuperb/]California”>CSUPERB | CSU)</p>
<p>Here’s the central website for CSU research.</p>
<p>–<a href=“http://www.calstate.edu/research/”>http://www.calstate.edu/research/</a></p>
<p>Here’s the website for CSU Agricultural research website.</p>
<p>–<a href=“http://ari.calstate.edu/”>http://ari.calstate.edu/</a></p>
<p>It took me 3 minutes to find these three websites, with my good friend Google.</p>
<p>Want to read the CSU mission statement? Here’s the website:</p>
<p>[CSU</a> | Public Affairs | The Mission of the California State University](<a href=“http://www.calstate.edu/PA/info/mission.shtml]CSU”>http://www.calstate.edu/PA/info/mission.shtml)</p>
<p>One of the clauses is that in order to fulfill their mission, the CSU system “Provides an environment in which scholarship, RESEARCH, creative, artistic, and professional activity are valued and supported.”</p>
<p>It is true that many of the CSUs were founded as universities solely for granting teaching degrees, but this was more than 100 years ago, and Lemaitre1 badly needs to update his/her data, as this is the second time that he/she is blatantly wrong.</p>
<p>Here’s a UCLA website related to undergraduate summer research.</p>
<p>[UCLA</a> Summer Programs for Undergraduate Research (SPUR)](<a href=“http://www.gdnet.ucla.edu/asis/srp/srpintro.htm]UCLA”>http://www.gdnet.ucla.edu/asis/srp/srpintro.htm)</p>
<p>One of the programs on here is the California State University (CSU) Sally Casanova Pre-Doctoral Scholars Program.</p>
<p>The description of this program includes the following:</p>
<p>“The Program places special emphasis on increasing the number of CSU students who enter doctoral programs at one of the University of California institutions.”</p>
<p>redmangoose, the point I’m trying to get across is that if you are a motivated student who performs well in classes and takes on appropriate extracurricular activities (research, jobs, internships, etc.) then you will absolutely be able to get into a UC graduate program.</p>
<p>Something to keep in mind is that the Harvard MBA program scrapes the top applicants off of many different undergraduate institutions, whether they be state flagships, top LACs, mid-range state universities, or Ivy League universities, and does not intentionally dig deep into any pool. This is because they accept the top students from any university, not all students from one university like Stanford. The UC system is not Harvard, but their mission to accept thousands of CC transfers ends with the Bachelor degree, and CSU schools are treated exactly as any other university is when graduate admissions come into play.</p>
<p>As far as your actual question, what they look for, you would need to specify the actual graduate/ professional program. There is a huge difference between applying for an MBA at Anderson and Med school at the David Geffen School of Medicine. </p>
<p>iTransfer pretty much nailed it in a general sense though, MBA programs look for job experience, while graduate programs look for research in that field. Both look for very high GPAs and test scores.</p>