I finished an engineering program abroad the US that is not recognized by any of the UCs. But I wanted to go to school here.
Is there anything wrong with going to cc and then transferring to a UC basically to start fresh? Will I be able to get TAG?
I am a permanent resident so I was just thinking of doing another major. I’m not bummed if the credits I took are worthless because my grades in the foreign school were not very good.
Opinions / advices welcome. Thanks for reading!
Did you have your foreign academic records formally evaluated? That is what you need to do before you take this process any further. You are required to submit your foreign records when you apply to degree programs in the US. It doesn’t matter if that college/university won’t award you transfer credit and decides to make you start over from the beginning, you still need to send official copies of your records.
Check the websites of the universities that you are interested to find out which evaluation organizations are acceptable to them. Most (if not all) of the colleges and universities in the US, and the US federal government accept evaluations performed by WES. http://www.wes.org/
Once you have the official evaluations, go meet with the international admissions officers at the UCs that you are interested in, they will be able to interpret your foreign records and will be able to tell you what your options are.
You posted the same question in the international student subforum; here’s the answer I gave you there.
“I would look into making your current degree “count.” Of course, you could start over at a cc, but many UCs won’t accept students for a second bachelor’s degree, or only in certain fields. You need to check with UC campuses how that would affect your situation. You may have to go to a California state university for your bachelor’s instead.”
Thanks a million…I thought my first post did not go through so I did it again. Sorry. I’ll go ahead with the evaluation and figure out my options. 
I haven’t gotten it evaluated yet, but I know that it will be a pain to try to reach the admissions office there to get the to send the official transcripts to the evaluation agency here…I have a feeling that might take weeks if not months…Do you think it would be a bad idea to take some classes here while I get it evaluated?
Was the foreign engineering degree program accredited by any organization with a mutual recognition agreement with ABET?
http://www.abet.org/global-presence/mutual-recognition-agreements/
http://www.ieagreements.org/Washington-Accord/signatories.cfm
You need to get your records evaluated. Until you have that done, you don’t know what your options are. In your situation, I do not recommend taking any credit classes while you are waiting. Those grades would also become part of your permanent academic record, and if they are bad, they will cause problems for you.
If you want to study, enroll in non-credit classes through the continuing education division of a local community college, or in a non-credit class through Coursera or Khan Academy or some other MOOC. You also could consider enrolling in an Intensive English program that offers high level academic English writing classes to get ready for the writing you will have to do when you do enroll in credit classes here someday. Just be sure that those aren’t credit bearing for now.
@ucbalumnus The program I finished is not ABET accredited. @happymomof1 Thanks for the helpful info. I’m contacting the foreign university now to get my official transcripts sent to WES for evaluation.