<p>I am a freshman in college. I will be starting to attend a community college in FLORIDA because my parents said if I want them to pay for a private/out of state school I'd have to go to community college first, so thats what I did.
I wish to be a physics major and work/live in California and I am looking at schools like the top UCs, USC, Caltech, Harvey Mudd, CMU, Stanford. I wish to know what classes should I take and what GPA to aim for, what professors to befriend, how to get scholarships, as well as what to do about extra-curricular.
In high school my GPA was 3.8 unweighted, all honors classes, 29 ACT, no ECs. I am attending the honors program (Free Tuition) at my community college.
I also don't know how to approach the Foreign Language requirement that is required in USC (and maybe others), since in High School I struggled with that and that brought down my gpa.</p>
<p>Because of their high freshman and sophomore retention rates, I doubt that Stanford and Caltech accept many transfer students. The UCs accept a fairly large number of transfer students with greatest preference given to applicants from California community colleges (CCCs), some preference is given to transfers from other UCs and lowest preference is given to transfer applicants from all other four year colleges such as California State Universities (CSUs). I really do not know where transfers from out of state community colleges would rank in priority for admission. It would probably be lower than CCCs and almost certainly higher than CSUs and other in or out of state four year colleges but I am not sure it would be above other UCs. </p>
<p>Since you would be applying as a transfer student your high school record and ACT score will not be factors in whether or not you are accepted by a UC. The most important criteria will be your community college GPA which will have to be at at least a 3.5 to have a chance of acceptance. Also, UCs highly value ECs and if you do not have any it is unlikely you would be accepted no matter how high your GPA is. I believe all California public universities do have a language requirement but individual campuses may differ on the level of proficiency they demand.</p>