I am a computer science major at University of Illinois, and I’m a California resident. I want to transfer due to a change in major (to ecology), and don’t want to stay in school because of financial reasons, since I am looking toward dental or med school now. My gpa isn’t so great right now (3.57), but I think it will get up to a 3.6+ after this semester. I’ll have completed the UC’s basic transfer requirements by the end of Spring 2017.
The thing is, since I am switching majors and decided right now, all my classes and extra curricular are about computer science. Will this hurt my chances? I am hoping to transfer to UCB, UCSD, UCD, UCSB, or UCI as an ecology and environmental studies major.
You need to look at each school’s requirements for transfer for your specific major. Also check out www.assist.org . It won’t be as helpful to you since you are not transferring from California school, but it should still be somewhat helpful. As an ecology major, for most schools there is likely going to be a biology series, a chemistry series, and maybe a physics series required. But if schools department website it will tell you that.
Fulfilling the basic transfer requirements is generally not enough. In addition to fulfilling any general education requirements, you’ll need to complete any requirements for your major. For some majors that may just be two or three classes. For other majors there may be several more.
You stand a good shot at Davis, which has a lot of ecology-related majors, and your GPA fits, but you need to fulfill the major requirements as noted on assist. However, if you apply there not sure I’d mention med school, because it’s kind of an odd fit to ecology and it might lose you some points if Davis is looking for committed ecology students.