Taking Courses Out of Sequence

Hello, Everyone.

I attend CSULB and intend on apply to a few UCs in the fall, but I have just hit a brick wall. Like many I recently discovered that I have become the latest victim of a ill-informed counselor who led me to believe that reading and comprehension course that I took during my freshman year would satisfy the English 1A requirement at the UCs. As fate would have it, it does not satisfy that category and I am left at the beginning of application season with English 1B completed and no English 1A.

Now, UCB is kind enough to provided articulations for their Reading and Comprehension category so I now know exactly which course satisfies English 1A. I’ve heard people on here telling other applicants that they should go ahead and take English 1A courses in the Spring and note it on the application, but this discovery has really put a dent in my hopes. Having to go back and take the early level writing course in my fourth semester when nearly all of their applicants have taken in their first makes me feel like their are going to see my application as a joke.

I am applying to UCB under Rhetoric. UCLA under Sociology and the rest under Political Science. I am fairly certain that I will receive all As this semester which would put my GPA at 3.7+ overall. My major GPA for UCLA would be 4.0. My application bleeds volunteer work and leadership. Hell, I have an award for excellence from an English department! The idea of an English 100 course ruining my chances is like a sick joke.

They aren’t going to see you as a joke. They are not going to judge who you are because you took English 1A before 1B. They just want to see that you did the classes.

You need to take it but be beware if you are fulfilling IGETC, your CCC may only grant partial as the course is out of sequence and they need to be taken sequentially. If your major requires full IGETC, and you’re going in with partial, that’s a big headache.

Be sure to note in your additional
comments that you were led to believe the original course was valid via a CCC advisor.

Retaking the course is the least of your worries. You need to hope that inconvenience is your only problem.

–> The key is to get the full certification from the CCC. It was their error after all.

The UC page does not say anything about taking the 2 courses in sequence. It says only

No order of any kind is stated, just that you need this pair for the English part of IGETC certification.

Furthermore the official 2015 IGETC manual is online at http://icas-ca.org/Websites/icasca/images/IGETC_Standards_version_1.6_final.pdf I can see no requirement anywhere in that document requiring English courses to be taken sequentially.

I can’t see the above poster’s post, but assuming he may be saying I am wrong, trust me I am right. At a counselor’s conference the speakers singled out this exact scenario - a non-CCC English comp course that the CCC advisors assumed fulfilled area 1a. The student took area 1b, and then it was determined the course did not fulfill area 1a and it was out of sequence. Taking area 1a after 1b put the courses out of sequence so the student could only get partial IGETC, as the CCC would not certify due to the sequence issue. The UCs noted this as a huge problem and a student needs to proceed cautiously when dealing with any non-CCC English and IGETC.

Last year the same thing happened up here on CC to a student who had just gotten accepted to Berkeley. Suddenly it was determined the English from her non-CCC would not fulfill area 1a, and she had taken 1b. Her CCC would not certify full IGETC. (She had completed three English courses total, as I recall, but the others would not fulfill area 1a.) It was suggested by Berkeley during an extensive back and forth to take English 1 out of sequence, although IGETC would not be fully certified, and then Berkeley would make its decision. As usual, the UCs will not say in advance one way or the other. I don’t know the outcome but the student was a wreck with stress for some time.

So in the off-chance there is a difference of opinion by someone else, trust me. Take IGETC English involving a non-CCC very seriously.

My apologies. It was @lindyk8 who mentioned IGETC and I assumed that was in response to what you were intending. But now rereading your post I see you made no mention at all of IGETC,which is a good thing since you don’t qualify for IGETC as a CSULB student.

You are simply working to fulfill the required classes to be considered as a junior xfer. Hence any talk about IGETC and the order of classes needed does not apply to you.