<p>Hello,</p>
<p>Can any california CC transfers speak on behalf of the difficulty of classes going from a CCC to a UC school like UCLA or UCB?</p>
<p>Was it much harder? If you got an A in general or organic chemistry for example, would it be much much hader to get an A in a UC?</p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>I think if CC classes were way easier than UC classes, then the UCs would hesitate before giving you credit for them. It probably will be a more challenging class simply because the rest of the class will be of a higher quality student, but for the most part I can’t see it being drastically harder. </p>
<p>It also depends so much on who your instructor is/the subject. But since as a transfer you’ll mostly be taking classes for your major, you should know what to expect.</p>
<p>^ I agree. I think that, in general, most CCs are just the equivalent of 100 and 200-level classes. They don’t have anything higher which is what makes the distinction between a college and a university. </p>
<p>However, the atmosphere is different at a university, but they wouldn’t give you credit or let your take classes for things you couldn’t handle. :)</p>
<p>Hi, I transferred from CC to Berkeley, EECS major. Some days it feels like being hit by a truck or something. Classes get harder, the material goes faster, and everyone around you is much smarter. That said, you learn a lot, and being challenged feels good.</p>
<p>Just… be careful with how you schedule, at least if you’re some sort of engineering major. Don’t take too many tech classes together during your first semester.</p>
<p>From UCSD to CC and now UCLA, I think the course difficulty differs tremendously. The PoliSci classes I took at SD I spent hours studying every week, read from cover to cover, had four additional assigned readings of 200 pages or so each and just a midterm + final + paper to make up my total grade. For one of the pre-reqs I took at CC, I had four tests that took about a day or two worth of cramming for me to study and extra credit opportunities. Got an A- at SD and As throughout my CC courses. Another class, POLI30 that I originally took at SD but dropped due to the rigor was statistics that used examples from previous elections and other political references that required me to not only know the math but history behind it. The transferrable class equivalent to that at the CC I take is…I must say easier than the AP stats course I took at high school. I’m pretty terrified for LA, but I think as long as you have the work ethics, it’s do-able. It’s not that the material is much, much harder but the professors won’t baby you, won’t make the extra time to give you one-on-one help and there’s a lot less work for your grade to average out to (typically just a midterm + final as opposed to the multiple tests and hw and such).</p>
<p>The reason I ask is because right now CC seems fairly easy, but granted I’m taking relatively beginner courses, and I spend a ton of time studying. </p>
<p>My general chemistry class, 55% of the class gets an A on average.</p>
<p>@failure622 I just got accepted to ucb as eecs and now you’re scaring me lol. Do you mean everyone is smarter than you or smarter than the kids at CC? Also how many tech classes per semester is too many do you think?</p>
<p>@JamesGold - Well, for me, there are days when I feel like everyone is smarter than me. 
You’ll definitely notice a difference from CC to UC, since you lose all the people who don’t really care about their classes, or don’t test well, or are just in school cause their parents made them sign up. Just remember that if you got in, it means someone thinks you’ve got what it takes, and that means you’ll do just fine.</p>
<p>In terms of classes… I took CS 61A/BL over the summer, which was a miserable combination towards the end of the session. Then I had EE20N, CS61C, CS70, and a humanities in the fall, which was about the limit (or a bit much) for me to keep up with. This semester I’ve got CS160, 161, and a humanities, and I’d say it’s a good balance… 160 is a project class though, so it chews up a TON of time. If you’re willing to work for it, you can probably handle any schedule, though you might be a little sleep deprived at the end of the semester. ;)</p>
<p>Just sign up for what you think looks like a normal schedule, and if it’s too much at the beginning of the semester, drop something. You’ve got time to figure it out.</p>
<p>I’m considering taking 61A and BL over the summer as well. What makes you say it was miserable?</p>
<p>@JamesGold - It’s just a lot of time spent in class/lab, especially because of BL. I was commuting too which meant losing 2 hours a day. Some of the projects are time consuming, just to figure out what’s going on and and get it working, etc. It didn’t get hard to keep up until the last two weeks or so, when both classes had big projects due and finals coming up and the usual lab work going on. If you’re comfortable with CS and data structures and such, I’d say go for it anyways… it makes scheduling easier later on.</p>
<p>(Sorry OP for semi-derailing your thread!)</p>
<p>I’ve always wondered…what does ccc mean?</p>
<p>California Community College</p>
<p>If you think for a second that the difficulty at a CCC is the same or close to the difficulty at a school like Berkeley or UCLA, then you’re mistaken.</p>
<p>The UC campuses give you transfer credit for those courses because you cover the same material, so you learn everything you’re supposed to. But the level of competition at a Berkeley or UCLA is several notches higher. Maybe (and that’s a big maybe) the top student at a CCC is as smart as the top student at a Berkeley or UCLA, but the middle chunk of the class at the UC schools will blow away the middle chunk of a CCC class.</p>
<p>At CC I was always the smartest person in the room, at UCLA I’m only as smart as I think I am.
The first quarter is the roughest and not only myself, but many of my fellow transfers struggled, that said it gets better. I would liken it to learning to ride a bike without training wheels, at first you can’t but eventually you get the hang of it. My first quarter I got a 2.7 and felt that I was pressuring myself too much to do well, basically I had never really dealt with failure academically, but by the 2nd qtr I had adjusted to the flow of things and wound up with a 3.6 and was back on track. In terms of classes, you wont see many scantron tests, but instead a lot of essay based questions which require a significant amount of thought and length.</p>
<p>Bring it on! XD</p>