UC Berkeley transfer admission vs regular admission

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of California - Berkeley
1

Why is UCB transfer admission percentage higher than the regular admission percentage?

2

Because it relies more on GPA than extracurriculars. You don’t need to be involved in 5000 BS organizations and be the President of your high school to get in to Berkeley if you’re a transfer student. Most majors would accept you with a 3.8GPA and BSing in your application about how you like to help people when you outside school. That’s about it.

3

Yes I know why it is easier. But why does berkeley not care about ECs and stuff?

4

Because you’re already proven that you can do well in college (more than people just finishing HS).

Similarly, when you apply to grad school, noone even asks about your ECs.

5

It is also generally harder to get a 3.8-4.0 GPA in college (including community college) than in high school, assuming similar commitment and effort. (Yes, there are late bloomers and high school slackers who turn themselves around in college.)

As far as raw admission rates go, it is all based on how many the school needs to admit to yield the desired number of incoming frosh and incoming junior transfers, divided by the number of applicants at each class level.

6

I haven’t been in a US high school, so I can’t comment on that; but if you compare Cal to a community college (I was in 3 of them), then it’s like comparing kindergarten work (community college) to an high school (probably, at least to where I went). Berkeley is 3 times harder than community college and this is a combination of professors that kick you ass, the amount of material, the phase of class, and overall difficulty of upper dev classes (vs. lower dev in community college). So coming from a community college is probably better than from HS because:

  1. You save money
  2. It’s easier to get in
  3. You are more prepared mentally and academically

Cons:

  1. No research opportunities in CC except for some summer programs in universities nearby
  2. It takes time to make friends and be involved in the community overall, so you’ll be in a disadvantage here compared to freshman
  3. When you’ll transfer to Cal (or any university), you GPA would be 0, so no “buffers” to rely on when you get any kind of a C grade (C-/C/C+). This happened to me my first semester and it killed my GPA right away. I had 3.8 in CC, now I barely have 3.2. It depends though on your major and overall skills, but a 3.5 from Berkeley is a very good GPA, while in CC it’s not that great so take this in account as well.