Hi. I’m a 24 year old with a fair amount of college at two out of state 4-year schools under my belt. I did well in high school (3.9 GPA/2210 SAT), but became drastically ill as a freshman and majorly bottomed out during my college career. (The last time I checked my transcript, my incompletes had converted into Ds and Fs, leaving me with a cumulative GPA of 1.22). I earned a total of 72 credit hours at my previous schools, neither of which I applied for nor received any financial aid to finance.
I’m applying for jobs in California in hopes of working for a year to gain in-state residency and attend a community college. I’d like to then transfer and complete a degree at a four-year university, but I’m slightly confused by the excess credit limit policies for transfer admission at many of these institutions. On Berkeley’s College of Letters and Science website, for instance, it says:
“A student who has accumulated more than 80 transferable semester units from a four-year institution is considered to have excess units and will not be admitted. A student who has completed 80 or fewer UC transferable semester units at a four-year university and then transfers to a community college will not accrue excess units and will be considered for admission.”
If I’m understanding this right, would I theoretically fit into this 80 credit window of permissibility? How standard are policies like these at other UCs and CSUs? In general, how feasible of an avenue is this to getting a college degree?
How many upper division courses do you have? Upper division, not lower. That is the key. Depending on campus, you can’t have more than 10-20 semester units of UD or you will be denied admission (unless they are not transferable).
Before you move here, you should also see what the academic renewal policy is at your college/s to get those grades removed. To get residency here, you’ll have to be here for a while and they check carefully to assure you didn’t just move to CA for educational purposes. You need to relinquish everything and start afresh here.
If you get AR or repeat the courses, they won’t be factored into the unit count.
I have 7 UD semester units, though I have no idea whether or not they’d transfer.
The big problem with retaking classes and doing academic bankruptcy at my old university is money. My parents are university employees, so I was previously able to pay for school through tuition remission. I’m no longer a dependent, so I don’t qualify for remission anymore. However, because I’ve exceeded the maximum amount of credit hours attempted, I’m also disqualified from receiving financial aid at my school. Since I plan on pursuing a different major than the one I chose when I was younger, it doesn’t make much sense to me to pay the full university price for a whole other degree and then some.
@hexagonsun Well, you’re old enough so they won’t calculate your parents income into tuition, but you need to change driver’s license, voting, tax return, banking, car reg and other stuff to CA. Plus, they check diligently that you are not going home on breaks or summer. I mean you can go for a weekend here or there, but they check to verify you have cut ties with home base. If you’re at a CCC and do that, it is doable with in state tuition. There are a bunch of other req regarding residency. Once you’re a CA resident, you can apply for aid as well.
Re AR or whatever they call it at that school, do you have to be enrolled at that same school to get it or can you apply for renewal once you have units with a minimum GPA from another school? Different schools have different rules.
It seems you had a good set up there but blew it. I don’t mean that as a dig because failure can lead to better things, rather than just sailing through. It probably will make you more dedicated, so that’s a big positive. I’m glad you’re regrouping and starting over. The UCs really like seeing that - not giving up, blah blah.
I would say step one is finding out the rules for AR. If the courses were a few years back, the UCs will often let it slide, but that’s obviously worse case scenario. You want to try and erase them. And when I said repeat them, I meant repeat them at a CCC. If the courses are deemed the same, the CCC repeat will erase the previous failing grade.
It is doable!