<p>Hi all,
I'm currently a first-year student at California State University, Long Beach pursuing a B.S. in Computer Science. However, I'm not entirely content here and would like to transfer to another university. My goal schools? UC Berkeley, LA, SD, Davis, Santa Barbara, Irvine, or USC. I know that admissions to any of the UC schools are generally granted first to Community College students. My confusion? I am not sure whether or not I should leave school for a year (taking an educational leave of absence), and attend a community college in order to transfer, or if I should continue at my school, taking courses to fulfill my major plan here, apply as a transfer student, and hope for the best. I plan on transferring for Fall 2015. The only reason I would take an educational leave (as opposed to leaving the university) would be as a fallback in case I am not accepted at any university. As a student here, I have a good GPA (I'm likely going to finish with a 3.8 after my first year) and 56 Units at this school. Even taking transfer courses at a Community College, I would still take about 11 units worth of credit that would transfer back to CSULB. Any suggestions?</p>
<p>USC does not give preference to cc applicants (because USC isn’t a UC…).</p>
<p>I think you had better call a UC admissions person maybe at a UC you don’t intend to transfer to, but get their take on it, to make sure it doesn’t cause any problems to transfer to a CC then to a UC. I did just look at UCLA’s 2013 admissions percentages and they took 28% of those applying from CCs and only 10% (and some fraction) of those applying from ‘other’ (applying from another UC was a separate category). So I can see why you would want to come from a CC, but it would be awful to do that then find out it doesn’t count if you started somewhere other than the CC or something.</p>
<p>Good luck.</p>