<p>To expand on what Gsteg said regarding upper division class sizes, I think it depends on your major and probably which UC you’re at. Being one of the biology majors, by far the biggest department at UCSD, I’ve never had an upper division lecture course with less than 150 students. Upper division lab courses tend to be different and that’s where I’ve been able to form the best connections with my professors. Most of the upper division labs here tend to be 30-40 students, so it’s much easier to get that individual time with a lab professor than say in a lecture hall of 300 people. So yeah that’s a lot different from in CC. In CC just by being one of the better students most of the professors knew who I was and were pretty friendly and social. At the UCs a lot of your professors will not even grade your work, so even if you’re a prodigal student they may still have no idea who you are. Not to mention in a big lecture class you could be one of 30-60+ people to get an A. So you’re still one of many talented students. In lecture classes if you want to really get to know the professor you need to go to their office hours, which even then can be crowded with students and talk to them after class. Just don’t expect the professors to be aware of you if you don’t really make an effort to see them outside of class. </p>
<p>It’s kind of hard to answer your questions because a lot of them are subjective. I can talk about specifics about what’s tangibly different. There are a lot more resources and opportunities at a UC both academically and socially. There are legitimate research / internship opportunities, amazing study abroad opportunities, resources for preparing you for after college (career center), many more social events and clubs, etc. A lot of classes have supplemental things like video/audio podcasts and online lecture slides, so you don’t even have to be in class to get the information unless you have to answer iClicker questions. Things like that there are just a lot more resources for students here and a lot more things to join and to do. </p>
<p>Regarding the transition that’s very subjective. It’s really going to be different for every person based on their academic abilities and their social skills. Academically the transition wasn’t too bad. My GPA’s higher now by than it was when I finished CC, but I definitely had to put in a lot more work. In CC, I pretty much got by on pure intelligence and memorization ability. I was a HUGE procrastinator and usually never even opened a book until a few days before an exam. Now at a UC, I still procrastinate lol, but less so. The quarter system takes some adjusting to, but you should get the hang of it after your first quarter. Quarters feel like they fly by compared to the semester system. You’ll have some classes that may have exams already in the 2nd week. Yes, in the 2nd week of class and you may have an exam and if not you’ll almost certainly have one by week 3 and definitely by week 4. In the semester system I never had to worry about taking an exam until at least the end of the first month. That’s probably the biggest thing to get used to, just the pace of the quarter system. It’s something I had heard a lot before getting here and it’s something that’s absolutely proved to be true. That being said, I really enjoy the quarter system. It’s really efficient and you feel like you accomplish a lot quickly because you have the opportunity to take more classes on more topics in the same amount of time as the semester system. </p>
<p>Just in terms of difficultly, I would say upper division courses are noticeably harder than CC classes, but not massively so. Plus even if they are there will almost certainly be a curve. I’ve been in classes where the average was around 40-50% and that equated to a B-. I think academically your transition depends on how well-prepared you were in CC and just your study habits. If you genuinely had CC professors that really challenged you as a student you should be fine moving on to a UC. Granted, you may think a class is difficult and challenging in CC and in the future may look back and think you were just naive then lol. I know just in CC I found some some of my courses hard, but then all of them were put into perspective when I go into Organic Chemistry. In fact, I can say that the Ochem teacher at my CC was genuinely more difficult than many of the same professors teaching ochem at UCSD or UCLA. So coming here going into upper division chemistry based courses like biochem were pretty easy. So if you had a lot of hard professors in CC, you’ll probably be okay here. If you breezed through a bunch of multiple choices exams in CC, you’re probably in for a surprise. </p>
<p>In terms of the social transition, I’m not going to get into it because I’ve already typed way too much, but that’s probably the most subjective thing of all. If you’re a social, extroverted person you’ll be fine. Even if you’re not, I’m not, if you’re proactive in searching for people similar to you you’re bound to find them. If you have any specific questions feel free to ask and I can try to answer if/when I find the time. Oh and just a random thing I realized regarding transitioning here. It took me about a month to get a good mental map of the campus. UCLA was a litter easier to navigate especially because I was almost exclusively was in south campus. UCSD is just massive and the college system makes it a bit harder to learn about all the places on campus. It’s just really spread out and you may not never even see 30-40% of the campus if you specifically set out to explore that area.</p>
It’s pretty cool when they remember that kind of stuff.</p>