Major Change after Transferring - History to Biochemistry

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of California - Los Angeles
1

Hello, fellow Bruins!

So I transferred to UCLA from CSUN/Glendale College as a history major in 2015. After completing three quarter’s worth of upper division history courses (nine to be exact), I became more and more disenchanted with the entire department due to subjective grading, biased lectures, and various other experiences I’d rather not discuss online. This is how I feel despite earning mostly A’s in those courses. And no, I’m not saying all professors were terrible. Definitely not the case!

That said, I want to change my major to biochemistry. I just took LS 2 over the summer and I fell in love with it. I’ve also taken CHEM 30A (organic chemistry) last fall and earned a B without giving it my all.

I also recently decided to pursue medical school after shadowing several professionals from various fields throughout the year. Medical schools require every applicant to take general physics, general chemistry, organic chemistry, biology, biochemistry, calculus, etc., which is already more than 2/3 the courses I need to earn a biochemistry degree from UCLA. So I’m stuck at UCLA for an extra year regardless.

I’m already enrolled in CHEM 30B, MATH 1, LS 3, and LS 23L for the upcoming fall quarter and I’m determined to perform very well in all four courses. I also have the next two years planned out and will definitely graduate by the end of 2018.

Things to note:

  • The only downside to my plan is that I will definitely exceed the 216 total unit restriction.
  • I plan on earning a master’s in biochemistry before applying to medical school and it’s obviously difficult to find universities that will accept me with a bachelor’s in history. My fault, I know lol.
  • I’ve already taken general chemistry at CSUN.

So here we go…

  1. If you’ve tried something like this and succeeded, please, please share your story!
  2. Should I talk to a counselor now or should I wait until I finish some of these classes?
  3. Earning this degree would mean the WORLD to me, and I don’t know how I can convince the department to believe me and give me a chance.
  4. In case this fails, does it make sense to pursue a second bachelor’s degree back at CSUN? I really am willing to go that far.

Sorry about the length of this post and I thank you so much for your time!

2

What would be the harm of talking to one now? I can’t imagine you’ll have more options later rather than sooner.

As for 2nd Bachelor, don’t. You say you want a MS in Biochem. CSU schools have (or at least used to have) a way to admit MS students provisionally for those that had not satisfied all the admit requirements. Once accepted they took the missing classes and then started the MS program. To do this my guess is that you’d take as many of the required classes as you can while earning a UCLA degree in something. But I’m no expert here; talk to a CSU counselor.

3

@odabach as a transfer student you will not be allowed into biochem at UCLA unless you transferred into that major directly.
For you to be allowed to be biochem as a transfer you would had to have taken all lower division chemistry physics calculus and life science/bio courses before transferring. It’s very clear in the course catalog.

In fact most, if not all science majors at UCLA will not allow you to switch into them without having done all the lower division math Chem bio physics before transferring.

This is why you apply into a major when you transfer !!! Trying to be sneaky and apply as history or anthropology then switch later will not work for transfers