Hello,
This is my first post.
I am a transfer student and I was recently accepted to UCBerkeley as a transfer student. My major will be political science and international relations and I’m looking to try and see if I can tack on some East-Asian/Japanese studies for a third major. I was accepted to Berkeley with a 3.03GPA and I thought that telling my story might be of some hope/insite to those of you out there who feel like you might have messed up.
My journey into college started the newest UC campus, UCMerced. It was the only UC I was accepted to, so I went there really as my only option. I didn’t have any clear idea of what I wanted to do or even what I myself liked, but I figured I liked going on the internet a lot, so I must like computer, therefor I should do computer science…and that was before I knew there was math envolved (I failed pre-calc in high school). Needless to say, I did very poorly my first year. I ended up with 2 Fs, 2 Ds and a slew of Cs and only one A, which was in my writing class. At that same time, I started studying Japanese randomly for no real particular reason on my free time (I will go into that later). By the end of my tenure at UCMerced, I had a 2.04GPA and was teetering on academic probation, so I withdrew from the campus while I was in good-standing.
As I said, I started studying Japanese in my free time. As luck or fate or whatever you want to call it, the community college near UCMerced has one of the largest outreach programs for Japanese students studying abroad. I was able to make a lot of friends and instead of going home, I remained in Merced and attended the community college. With the large number of Japanese students, I was able to be constantly surrounded by not just Japanese students, but also businessmen and educators from Japan. I made sure to talk with these people on a daily basis and get to know them.
By the time I had one semester at the college under my belt, I had actually gotten to the point where I was reading Japanese newspapers and watching the news and pretty much enjoying Japanese the same way I would enjoy anything in English (while looking up words in the dictionary of course). So I figured I should plan a trip to Japan. And while I was at it, I thought I may as well apply to some Japanese universities. I figured I had a horrible chance of getting into any respectable American school, so it might actually be a good idea to try some over there. So in the summer of 2010, I went to Tokyo and took university tests. I paid for the trip by being stingy and finding odd jobs to do with the Japanese businessmen (thus reinforcing my Japanese).
So after I came back from Japan, I started my 3rd semester in my college back at Merced. The tests I took in Japan in the summer were only a first set of tests and I actually needed to go back to Japan, right before finals week, to take more tests and sit for interviews. I made sure from the start of the semester to work hard and get to know my professors, that way they would be fine with letting me go to Japan for 2 weeks right before finals.
While all of that was going on, I was of course in the process of writing my UC applications. My testing in Japan went from Nov 20-Dec 3. So if my memory serves me right, I actually turned my UC essays in while I was in Tokyo (weird). But this also meant that I would be applying to the UC schools with no real knowledge of if I was accepted to the universities in Japan or not, so that information was never able to make it to my essays. All I could hope for was that they saw improvement in my grades and that I took an interesting summer trip.
So, I got back to Merced from my winter Japan trip and took my finals then waited for the results from the Japanese schools. I ended up being accepted (for anyone interested, the schools were Keio and Waseda). Perhaps the most important thing that I did though while in Japan was go and talk with Japanese professors and get to know them as well (I will explain why later).
As it would turn out, Japanese schools don’t take transfer units, so going there would have meant starting back from square one and of course it would mean going into a large debt. These are all things I knew before squandering thousands of dollars just to take tests and they were things I thought I wouldn’t mind. But when faced with the very real decision of less secure schools and more debt and more time, I opted to stay in America.
Now to fast forward to the recent future. My spring break was filled with 2 events, none of which made me happy. One was my acceptance to UCDavis. Not a bad school, my sister went there, but they happened to have some of the lowest transfer GPA requirements (2.9+), so I felt as though it was more of a consolation than something that I had worked for. Then came the news from UCLA. I was rejected. This is actually something I was expecting in all honesty. I didn’t expect them to really sift through the some 50,000+ essays and find mine in the middle of all of that and take it in. So with UCLA saying “no,” I was certain UCBerkeley would be out of the question. The day I got rejected by UCLA, I wrote up my appeal letters for UCLA and Berkeley, emailed the professors in Japan to write appeal letters for me and was completely ready to barge through the admission offices and demand that they take a better look at my application.
But today, I found out that I don’t have to do that. I got accepted.
If there is really anything that I learned from this and anything that I’d like other people to get out of are really two things: do what you enjoy and make connections. When I say do something you enjoy, I really mean do something that you absolutely love, something you can’t stop doing, something that you truly could not see yourself without. It really shows in a person when they have chosen a path that is not suited to them, which is what happened to me. But that all changed the moment that I committed myself to something I really believed in passionately. Next is the part about connections. Connections can get you jobs, they can get you letters of recommendation, and they can be the start of some really meaningful relationships.
On a side note and somewhat related to the connections, I have also applied to Stanford. This time I will have essays detailing everything that I did and letters of recommendation from the professors I made sure to talk with daily while in Japan. And I’ll let you all know how that turns out.
So yeah, basically, to anyone who has hit any bumps in the road, just keep on working towards those things you can get excited about and I am sure something good will come your way 
Good luck!
PS: For anyone interested in my course load and grades, here is a simple list of those:
[Freshman] - UCMerced
First Semester (16 units): A, B, C, D
Second Semester (15 units): A, C, C, F and a W
GPA: 2.25
[2nd Year] - JC
First Semester (12 units): A, A, A, A
Second Semester (13 units): A, A, A, B
[3rd Year] - JC
First Semester (15 units): A, A, A, B
Second Semester (7 units): A, A, A
JC GPA: 3.85
Cumulative GPA: 3.03
In terms of clubs, I just did two:
PTK (honors society): VP and treasurer. This is highly recommended for all transfer students. Great way to surround yourself with likeminded, hardworking students.
International Club: VP. This is the one I was actually passionate about.
Notes: I had to take a really light course load at my current college because I was close to having over 80 units. If you go over 80 units before transferring, it tends to automatically disqualify you for going to UCs. But I also had to spread classes out of two years to make sure I could do all of my Japanese school stuff at the same time.
