Transfering with bad general ed GPA but good major GPA?

Transfer Students
1

<p>I started at a local CC when I was 16 and had no idea what I wanted to do. I messed around a bit taking every IGETC(general ed) course and landed myself a 3.1 gpa. I skipped classes all the time, missed some quizzes, withdrew from several classes because I didnt care about my life.</p>

<p>Im 20 now, and when I realized I wanted to get into mech/bioengineering I started working a lot harder and taking the prerequisite courses, but at that point my GPA was already kinda screwing me over for good schools like UCLA, and I had already wasted years of my life taking courses that are irrelevant for engineering.</p>

<p>I have now taken Precalc, Calc 1, Intro to Chem, Gen Chem, C Programming, and one physics course and have gotten an A in all of them, but its only raised my GPA to 3.3. I still have several math and physics courses left to take to complete transfer prereqs, but I cant imagine it would put me above a 3.5, assuming I got A's in all of them.</p>

<p>So my question is, will I just be flat out rejected by schools like UCLA or Berkley based on my total GPA, or will they basically ignore the general ed courses I got W's/bad grades in (like a C in anthro for skipping class) and just look at my engineering prerequisite grades?</p>

<p>And would it benefit me to take a bunch of easy non-major courses just to boost my total gpa? Im thinking of taking some easier online Bio and Computer Applications classes just for simple, non time consuming A's. Would that be a waste of time?</p>

2

<p>If you already have a lot of useless credits the last you want to do is add more useless credits to your transcript. The college folks will think “why is this guy talking all these random classes?” and if they think it’s just for a GPA boost, that will not look too good. </p>

<p>UCLA and UCB engineering are super competitive. If you can complete all the major-pre-reqs with As I would say you got a chance for UCB with a good personal statement and an explanation of those old grades in the additional comments section. But realistically you should just TAG into some other UC school as a backup.</p>