I am a first year student at UCSB and have been admitted to UC Davis as a sophomore transfer. I am one GE short of completing them all at UCSB (one from Area A - English Reading and Comprehension). After speaking to an academic adviser at UCSB, she told me there was this thing call “reciprocity,” where UCSB won’t transfer any of my credits until I have all of my GEs done. So if I don’t have all of them finished by the time I transfer, I will have to start all over at UC Davis. Is this true? Has anyone else heard of this? Is this not crazy? I’m so frustrated that my next three years of college are based on this stupid “reciprocity” issue. I’ve completed so many units at UCSB and I’m not willing to start over because the school is being stubborn. I need any advice!
UC reciprocity applies for students transferring from one UC campus to another - it’s a piece of paper that your old school would send to the new one saying that you completed all of your lower division GE requirements at your old campus and will be exempt from them at your new one. Since you are not done with all your GE’s, UCSB can’t send the letter of reciprocity to Davis. This means that you won’t get credit for all of your lower div GE’s, so instead Davis will try to see which ones will apply for their lower div GE requirements but you will probably have to take more classes at Davis to complete their general ed requirements, because it’s slightly different for every UC campus. Hope that makes sense
Would it be possible for you to take the last class this summer at UCSB? Wouldn’t that get it fulfilled for you?
Definitely check out the advice goldencub gave. I don’t know about Davis/Santa Barbara but when I spoke to my office of the registrar, they allow summer courses at my UC to fulfill the GE reciprocity.