I’m from California but I attend Mississippi State University. I just completed my freshmen year with a 3.81 gpa and was planning on transferring to UCLA or any other UC’s. I understand that you need 60 transferable credits which I will have after my sophomore year. However, I see that you need to complete two calculus’s, advanced english, macroeconomics and microeconomics. I’m worried because I won’t have these courses completed before I apply in November 2016. I will have them completed before Junior year though. The lady at admissions says that California community colleges get priority when it comes to transferring. Should I consider Math/Economics instead? I will take any advice I can get so I can transfer.
https://www.admission.ucla.edu/prospect/adm_tr/Tr_Prof.htm
Your chances would be better if you came home and attended 1 or 2 years at a CC.
Look at the 2014 and older stats for Mississippi.
I would agree with the post above me. You are not going to get into UCLA, or any reputable UC transferring from Mississippi State. It is nearly impossible to get into a UC from out of state. Come back home and take some courses at a CC, then you can almost definetly get into UCLA, as long as you keep that 3.8/3.9ish GPA (maybe even Berkeley if you do well and have good EC’s).
While I agree with Happy2Help that it has the highest likelihood of success, do you really want to leave your current university to do it?
How happy are you with MSU? If you are extremely not happy there, then yes, I would consider a CC option back home.
@trevorjayy you could run into unit max and course articulation problems if you stay at Mississippi State for your 2nd year. Your best chance of transferring to a UC would be to do your 2nd and possibly 3rd year at a California CC where we have a clear transfer process identified. If you looked at the stats, you’ll see that CA CC students have a higher chance of acceptance over all other groups.
If transferring to a UC was always in your plan, for whatever reason, then I highly recommend doing it starting now by visiting your local CC and talking with a transfer advisor.
You alluded to being from California, and if you are actually a resident or graduated from a CA high school, you should take advantage of your residency and attend college here. If you are not a CA resident, then you are looking at ~$55K per year at a UC as an OOS student.
course articulation problems could happen. Unit max cannot if all the classes taken are lower division.
Yes thank you @mikemac
http://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/counselors/files/uc-transfer-maximum-limitation-policy-chart.pdf
Some students (my son for example) had started taking upper division courses in his 2nd year. So your 2nd year courses should be lower division courses.
ETA Course evaluations are done after accepted to a UC, usually not before.
Thank You so much for all the replies. Would I be okay if I took a Winter semester and Spring semester at a California CC? I would take the fall semester in Mississippi. Also am I in the same boat if I tried to get into a Cal State?
Majority of the Cal states would be an easier admit than the UC’s, but you need to be a Junior level transfer and complete the Golden Four GE requirements. You would have to see if the GE courses a MSU articulate to the Cal States.
Again, priority is given to in-state CCC students and priority to local in-service area transfers.
Thank you for your advice @Gumbymom Do you know how I would be able to find that out?
You could try and use assist.org. Type in a Cal state like SDSU and see which courses are required for GE’s and major prep. Look up the descriptions and try to match them to the MSU courses. Again attending a California CCC next year would be the easier route
Not really sure what you mean here by “ok”, nor by your usage of Winter and Spring semester.
Fall/Winter/Spring usually refers to schools that are on a quarter system. Semester schools have Fall and Spring semester.
As for “ok”, if by this you mean would you get preference as a CC xfer student from CA, the answer is no since you won’t have taken enough units to qualify for the preference.
Several CA CCs now have what’s called a Winter Intersession where a 1 semester course is compressed into about 4 weeks. UCs will look at your self reported courses and grades through the Fall prior to your expected attendance the following Fall.
If you’re serious about transferring to a UC, your best chance for acceptance would be to take courses starting this Fall at a CCC. Staying at Mississippi State would be closer to no chamce, unfortunately for the UCs and a slim chance at your local CSU.
Service area for CSUs:
http://www.calstate.edu/sas/onestopkiosk/documents/CSULocalAdmission-ServiceAreas.pdf
I would be careful about staying for Fall Semester if your goal is a UC school. They are not easy to get into these days and you really need to be coming from a California community college to have a change to get in. As someone else said above, almost all CC’s go on semester system, so you would be finishing fall at Mississippi State, then coming to a CC for the Spring (semester).
If you are serious about a UC, (which I think you should be, they are some of the best schools in the country that are not private) then get your butt back to California.
If you want to attend a CSU, which is also fine, you have a little bit more freedom for most of the CSU’s. Only CSU’s that may give you trouble is if you are trying to get into Cal-Poly SLO or CSU Fullerton. The others are not very competitive.
Actually I would put SDSU on the list of difficult CSU admits, due to competitiveness, popularity and priority to SD applicants.