I noticed there’s a handful of classes that mechanical engineering students take within their first fwo years at UCLA that I have not taken. I was wondering if engineering transfers normally finish within two years or if they may need an extra year to graduate.
It really depends. Its not uncommon for transfers to take 3 years to finish. Depending on the frequency of the classes you’ve missed being taught, you may be able to do summer classes to catch up, or take a slightly heavier load than non-transfers for a couple semesters.
I myself am hoping to do it over three years if i can get my adcisor on board. I have 3 classes I’ll be behind by, and they aren’t offered over summer. Also the planned quarter by quarter list shows a few quarters at 18-20 credits, which seems pretty high to me.
@Bear87 yeah, I’d like to finish in two but I feel like it would be better to spread it out, especially with the boatload of upper division engineering classes I need to take. Summer classes are really expensive too and I don’t live too close to UCLA.
18-20 units does seem pretty high for a quarter. My gpa would definitely suffer I were to take that many 
I’d say look at whether you can take equivalents of those classes at a CC in your area, and also work thru the graduation requirement list to see if you actually need them. An extra year at UCLA will cost you a bundle! There’s the $30K estimated cost of attendance, plus a year of missing the $60K+ starting salary that an ME gets. For over $90K in cost I’d look really hard at making it happen in 2 years. Even if you’re on a full scholarship $60K is nothing to sneeze at.
@mikemac yeah that’s why I would really want to finish in two. The only thing is my CC doesn’t offer any engineering classes and it’s sister school does not offer much either. I think I went over the unit cap anyways for transferable CC classes.
It’s very unlikely that you’ll finish in 2. It might not take you a full 3, but it will likely take you more than 2 without having credit for at least 3-4 of the upper div classes coming in.
I’m over unit cap as well, and I’ve taken every lower div course available at CC.
While an extra year’s tuition is not to be taken lightly, a 60k starting salary is not guaranteed, especially if your GPA isn’t up to snuff.
I’d much rather spend 30k and an extra year and have a quality 3 year college experience, do better in school and possibly land a better job than be miserable for two years, perform poorly, and get a lower paying job or no job.
From UCLA, the average time to degree for transfers is 12.0 quarters.
http://www.registrar.ucla.edu/archive/catalog/2011-12/catalog/catalog11-12-835i.htm
That link says that the average number of quarters at UCLA for transfer students was 6.7 for 2009-2010 graduates. 66% graduated in 6 or fewer quarters. (Frosh took an average of 12.1 quarters, with 80% taking 12 or fewer quarters – note that this is different from the 65% who took four years or fewer, indicating that some students did not need extra quarters but did take time off from school for whatever reason.)
However, in your specific case, you can get a better estimate by looking up the degree requirements and planning out your post-transfer schedule to see whether it is realistic to finish all of them, including the “catch up” courses you need to take because your CC does not offer all of them, in 6 quarters, or if you need one or more extra quarters.
If possible, look around other CCs in your area to see if the needed courses are available. See http://www.assist.org .
ucb, good catch. I should have done the math 12/3=4 years sounds a little long.