<p>So I had an awful first year and a half at USC, dropped most classes and now I have a 1.96 GPA there. I left after those two years and now I'm at a CC at home in NJ. I've been doing great here and plan to have an associate's degree in business administration after spring semester with about a 4.0 GPA. (This may actually require a couple classes over the summer or maybe pushed back until fall.) After I get my associate's degree, I plan on transferring, I'm just not sure where or even what kinds of schools to be looking at, given my awful two years in California.</p>
<p>Here is the relevant info:</p>
<p>Background:
Hispanic male (Colombian)
New Jersey
competitive public high school</p>
<p>sat ii's:
math ii-800
literature-750
chem-650</p>
<p>ap classes/scores:
chem-5
calc ab-5
english lit-4
statistics-4
physics b-3</p>
<p>gpa:
weighted high school-4.1 (5 ap classes, honors classes when ap was not offered, academic electives rather study halls)
usc-1.96 (only about five or six classes)
county college of morris-3.9 (associate's degree in business admin)</p>
<p>extracurriculars:
lacrosse
journalism-copy editor then editor in chief in high school, also had my own humor column
drama club-involved in four productions
phi theta kappa
dean's list</p>
<p>six years as a fifa certified soccer referee
extensive work experience in after school and summer jobs</p>
<p>i'm not even sure where to look for schools, but off the top of my head nyu (huuuuuuuge long shot, we can dream can't we?), fordham, rutgers (instate), tcnj (instate)</p>
<p>any suggestions for what schools to look at?</p>
<p>Can’t edit this, but forgot to add I am also a National Merit Scholar, as well as a National Hispanic Scholar (National Hispanic Recognition Program).</p>
<p>i’m actually not sure whether the fact you will have an AA in your hands will actually help you when you are trying to transfer. the fact that you are getting the degree makes it clear that you have overcome your circumstances at USC. it’s definitely a turnaround story, so it might not be as bad as you think it is.</p>
<p>Would getting my associate’s degree faster help? If I take classes over winter break and summer, I can get it in one year as opposed to two. The con I see to that is that I only have one year of good grades as opposed to two (more of a pattern) and only one year of extracurriculars.</p>
<p>I had a lot of problems adjusting to college. I was on my own for the first time, I was all the way across the country in a completely different scene, LA is a huge city nothing compared to NYC, almost impossible to get around without a car, it’s almost entirely private school kids from LA who all knew each other (or so it seemed), I went from being a big fish in a small pond to a small fish in a big sea…many things went wrong :/</p>
<p>No knocks on USC, it’s a great school, just not for me</p>
<p>One thing that should be noted is that when you go to a university, you’re always a small fish in a big pond, always. Any school will have the problems you listed except without the good weather that comes with USC ;p.</p>
<p>I don’t really know what schools you’re looking at either. Assuming you take as many credits in CC as you did in USC, you’d be looking at about a 3.0 college GPA. The trick for you is going to be to find a school that cares a lot about high school statistics for transfer students. I strongly recommend taking more credits at CC than you did at USC to give CC a higher weighting. Whether you do that by taking 20 credits and do it in a year and a half or do it in 2 years taking 15 credits a semester doesn’t really matter. Although if you could get the same grades taking 20 credits a semester would probably look slightly better.</p>
<p>I’d say that getting into a school as good as USC isn’t out of the question but you might have to settle for a small step lower like NYU or either UWs.</p>