Are there any good discussions with advice for beginning community college students? Is there any advice that people would be willing to give to an student starting community college this fall?
Thanks!
See a counselor and make an educational plan. Assist.org will be your best friend, follow it. Don’t take more classes than you can handle. Also make friends with all of the hot girls.
Consult ratemyprofessor.org when choosing specific classes. A technically full courseload is going to be 12+ units, and most classes are 3 units. I highly recommend taking no more than 4 classes your first semester. Do you have AP units? Do you know if you want to transfer to a UC or CSU? These factors and plenty more should be considered in choosing your path.
If you want to transfer to a UC, you can get guaranteed admission via TAG (transfer admission guarantee) to all UC campuses except UCB, UCLA, and UCSD, provided you earn a high enough GPA depending on the school’s requirements, and your major. There’s another program called TAP that is really great to do if you qualify. Most CC students follow something called IGETC - if completed, it satisfies all general education requirements before one transfers to a UC (and I think CSU). IGETC is really great because you can take many courses in multiple different disciplines, and that can help you decide what to major in, or just give you a good amount of knowledge in multiple areas. Not all majors need to or should follow the IGETC pattern.
Meet with a counselor, ask them about TAG/TAP/IGETC, talk to them about your interests/possible major, and go from there.
For general advice, do the readings in your classes ahead of time. That will help you tons. Try to get the best possible grades you can - managing your time is key. I recently learned about a studying strategy called the “Pomodoro Technique” and it’s really helped me get work done efficiently. Look it up if you’re interested, I wish I knew about it during my first year at CC. Oh, and you will have to study regularly. This isn’t high school, and although it’s generally not too difficult at a CC, it’s definitely an adjustment.
Thanks for all the advice goldencub!
I’ve actually mapped out my “schedule” for the next two years. I’m going to TAG with UC Davis and decided to limit my applications to Davis, SD, LA and Berkeley. Because I’m applying computer science most of the schools advise to not take IGETC and follow with specific regulations.
I’ll be sure to check out the Pomodoro Technique.
Also could you clarify something about the AP tests for me? Do the actual scores matter? Since I got a 4 on the Calc BC test, I was wondering if not having a 5 will affect me negatively,
Do you have any advice on the level of extracurricular activity I should partake in to have a strong application?
@Orangered123 Talk to your counselor, they will let you know if your AP tests will let you skip anything. I got a 3 on my AP Literature exam and am getting 5.33 units from it, but I’m not sure if a 4 will affect you or not.
If you have a 4.0 will all prerequisites completed, EC’s do not matter. It’s not the same as high school. They primarily want to see that you can do well in college. If you want to do some EC’s, look into some of your CC’s clubs, get a job, volunteer, etc. Major-related EC’s will probably benefit you more. Remember, though, your academics ought to come first.
- Plan ahead. Classes fill up really quickly because many CC's are underfunded and overcrowded. It can get easy to get stuck in CC for longer than you want to. Go to a counselor, and have several different schedules ready.
- Pay attention to assist, and the IGETC. Seconding TAP.
- If the professors offer office hours, go to them. Make friends with your professors, most of them want you to do well. A professor passed me in a difficult math class when I should have failed, so that I could transfer to UCB-- because I met with her at least twice a week to go over material, and every day for two weeks before the final exam, and she could tell I was working myself to the bone.
- Study groups! Bouncing ideas off other students is very helpful, as is talking through questions. This is also a good way to make friends. Community College can be sort of difficult to make friends in because everyone is trying to get in and out. Go to class, go home. Transfer away, etc.
- Take some classes you might not have considered! My favorite class at CC was a Marine Biology class (I'm a Poli Econ Major). The Professor was a retired Marine Biologist who'd worked and taught at Scripps and Yale, and had 30+ years of field work experience. He brought in live specimens every week for lab, always had a story, and I loved that class so much. If I thought I could hack it math and science wise, I would have switched to Marine Bio then and there.
- I would disagree that EC's don't matter, depending on your major. For the more competitive majors, it's not enough to have a great GPA. But yes, academics for sure come first.
Consider Honors classes for more serious classmates, smaller class sizes, and for advantage in TAP. Also consider joining Phi Theta Kappa (an “earned” honor society).
@Revanluv Thanks for all the advice! I really appreciate it!
What would you recommend is is a good number of courses for a balanced course load when on the quarter system?
There is a recent book that summarizes the research into how to learn effectively. The book is “Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning” and has lots of useful advice for HS/college students as well as explaining the research.
One of the approaches discussed in the book is frequent quizzing. A free software program to memorize and quiz yourself is Anki. I suggest setting it up and becoming familiar with it. And along the lines of frequent quizzing there are study guides called something like “X Problem Solver” where X may be Calculus, Econ, Chemistry, etc. These books are like SAT review books for the subject, with thousands of worked examples. It is well worth using these books to test yourself, working problems until you can solve them easily and then your class tests will just be more of what you know you can do.
@orangered123 this might sound like a weird question in advance, but what kind of GPA do you think you will have? You have an idea of your skill set (no matter how you did in high school), and motivation is a key part of GPA (unless you take a subject you have no affinity for). Based on your planning, I am suspecting you will have a strong GPA.
The reason I ask is if you think - and you will have a better sense after first term - that you can get a strong GPA, then it’s not in any way crucial that you need UCLA TAP to get to UCLA. Only 25% of the UCLA admits are TAP-certified. Majority don’t have it. Re-examining the very interesting and new Pathways to Four-Year Universities, you get support from berkeley to apply to berkeley, another UC, and a 4-year, which I assume is a CSU. Even though it does not give priority, I suspect in some ways it does give priority, in that the advisors are telling you exactly what to do and say in your applications to get in (same as berkeley TAP). So, if you have your sites set on berkeley, that would be the one I might consider choosing, and I’m not sure how you choose the second UC.
Now if you think your GPA could be stronger and you really want UCLA, then go for TAP. However, you should find out how the second UC is determined in the Pathways program first.