Hi everyone, I’m a 3rd-year at a local CCC and I will be applying for transfer this fall. I’m a biological sciences major, I had a rough start to college and even switched my major at one point. I switched back to biology last year and ended up taking on too many hard-core classes on top of extracurriculars and a job. For about 70% of my major-prep classes (bio, chem, math) I’ve received a C. Now, I’m trying to decide what to do. I was planning to finish math and physics and o-chem at my college this upcoming school year right before transfer. I’ve spent most of my summer reviewing chemistry and math and started self-study on a bit of o-chem and physics.
Basically, I feel like I learned my lesson and feel okay in learning the remaining classes. The issue is that I already have plenty of C’s and I’m worried the UC won’t look at most of the grades I get in my last year at CC.
Is there any hope I can transfer out for a major in biology? Any advice would be so appreciated. Thank you for reading.
You can check Transfers by major | University of California to see what the 25th-75th percentile college GPA ranges for admitted and enrolled transfers to various UCs and majors are, in addition to admit and yield rates.
However, if your major prep courses are mostly C grades, that may bias admission chances downward compared to what your overall college GPA may suggest.
You did not mention your overall college GPA, so others here cannot even guess about your chances. However, CSUs which are not impacted at the campus level and where biology is not an impacted major should admit California resident transfer applicants with a 2.0 college GPA and transfer course requirements completed.
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Hi, thank you for your response. I will definitely check out that link. My overall college GPA right now is a 3.14, but that is also including all of the GEDs and some classes I took for sociology.
One more question - I noticed a lot of UCs (for biology majors) are strongly recommending org chem and physics, do you think they would look over my application once more after the fall of this year? I was hoping I could show an upward-trend in those remaining classes. Or would they just put down my application after seeing all of the Cs when I apply this fall?
UC Transfer academic update for Fall Grades and Spring courses
After applying, transfer students are required to update their grades and course records.
You must provide your final grades from the previous term and list all courses in progress or planned for all terms before you expect to enroll. Your updates will ensure UC campuses have the most current academic information available. Even if you do not have any in-progress or planned courses and your record of course grades was complete in your original application, you must log in to your application and complete the Transfer Academic Update.
Organic chemistry is a prerequisite for some upper level biology courses. If your emphasis will be in molecular and cell biology, then it is best to take them before transfer in order to avoid delaying graduation. Organic chemistry is less critical as a prerequisite for ecology and evolutionary biology.
Hello, for the transfer academic update, it’s usually done near the end of the semester/quarter around May-June right? And, iirc, it would be after April when the decisions for whether or not you get accepted into the university comes out. So in my case, even if I show improvement in the fall of 2023 and the last 2 quarters of 2024, it won’t matter (in regards to actually getting in) because by April they would have already decided whether or not to accept me. Is that accurate?
The TAU deadline is January 31, 2024 so prior to decisions.
Make sure you apply widely since Major prep/GPA are the most Important factors in the UC transfer process.