<p>Hello I was wondering if anyone had any information on california colleges. I am currently a resident of Florida and am hoping to go to a community or state college in California. </p>
<pre><code> My GPA is not quite high enough due to the fact I went to a very academically challenging private school and it lowered my GPA quite a bit. I am in the process of bringing it up now. I do not think I will be able to get into a state college in California with my current GPA.
I was wondering if it was possible to go to a community college for a year in California then transfer after a year of community college to a state university. I am not looking to get into Berkley or Stanford or anything. My choices would probably be UC Santa Cruz or UC Santa Barbara. If this is possible to do I was also wondering how much more expensive it would be to do this as opposed to going to a state college here in Florida.
If you have any recommendations I would love to hear them. Thank you.
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<p>De Anza college in Cupertino (Welcome</a> to De Anza College) is one of the top-ranked cc's in the country. It has 45,000 students many of whom are part-time - working their way through school or just taking night classes to beef up in an area or to change careers. You can take the standard core fresh/soph UC curriculum there and transfer to UC Santa Cruz or UCSB if you maintain a 3.0 GPA. You write a Transfer Admission Agreement or a Transfer Admission Guarantee contract, take the right courses, maintain the GPA, and you are guaranteed admission. It costs $107/unit for OOS - around $6000/year with fees and such. Of course, then you have to find a place to live. I think other cc's in CA have similar arrangements so you can probably find one near Sacramento, like Sierra College (Sierra</a> College home page) that has cheaper housing. Also, Santa Barbara CC has on-campus housing of some sort.</p>
<p>Loyola Marymount (Home</a> - Loyola Marymount University) is a great, not so hard to get into school in a great location and everyone I know who goes there loves it. It would be my first choice if it wasn't so close to home - a lot of the dorms have great views of LA and even the ocean, which is not to far away. </p>
<p>All of the Cal-States are not that hard to get into also and particularly San Diego, San Jose, and Long Beach are great schools.</p>
<p>As for community, Santa Barbara CC is a great school, as is Santa Monica College (SMC). I took classes at SMC last summer and I plan to take some again this summer, it's a nice campus and the environment and the student body are amazing (a lot of internationals though). The only thing is rent around SMC is probably hecka expensive.</p>
<p>The Cal State colleges are big, but many have good programs and nice campuses (not to mention gorgeous weather) and they are affordable, even for out of state. If you like the Santa Cruz area, you could look at Cal State-Monterey Bay. </p>
<p>Plug in the name of the college and then look at estimated costs. For the UCs and Cal States, both in-state and OOS expenses are included. Also very useful info about admission rates and the different programs offered. To compare, you can plug in the names of FL colleges. It's a very informative site.</p>
<p>Thank you guys. I really appreciate all the feedback. I have one more question. In Florida the high school GPA is calculated from 9th-12th and I read somewhere that California calculates only from grades 10th-12th. Would that still apply to out of state students applying to go to a California colledge? If so then my GPA will be signifigantly be boosted. Thank you all again for the very helpful feedback.</p>
<p>I work in a public high school in California.</p>
<p>CA state colleges (UC and CSU) require 60 transferable units from a junior college. In other words, they want your first 2 years of GE done there before they'll accept you. That being said, the transfer GPA was around 3.2 from JC into Berkeley. The average transfer GPA was a 3.0 and I heard from admissions they went down to 2.6 for Santa Barbara!</p>
<p>The CA state schools use weighted, academic courses from grades 10-11 to evaluate your application. However, you cannot have any D's in required courses. There are a few excpetions with CSU here. Courses accepted from CA high schools are listed on the A-G list on the UC website. Yes, they use this method for all students so only your sophomore and junior year grades will count. For UC, there is also a qualifying SAT/ACT score and SAT Subject score all based on points matched with your GPA. They do weigh in your senior year grades to make sure you qualify after the fact...3.0 for UC and 2.0 for CSU.</p>
<p>CSU system is much easier to get into (excluding Cal Poly and San Diego State) than UC. In the UC system, Santa Cruz, Riverside and Merced are easiest. If you are in the 3.4 GPA and have eligible test scores, consider applying there. </p>
<p>One more note, it almost impossible to move from the CSU system to the UC system. So if you really want to try for UCLA, Berkeley or Santa Barbara, go to JC for 2 years first. </p>
<p>These websites should help. The last one is all about transfer. Good luck.</p>
<p>I know tons of seniors who end up going to Palomar, Miramar, Mesa, and City who go on to transfer to a UC after 2 years. It really helps it you're in a crunch financially.</p>