UC transfer sign up for classes?

Hi guys,

I am a transfer student starting in Fall 2016 and I was wondering if any of you guys know if there is any restriction on signing up for classes. For instance, I am an Anthropology major at UC Davis and planning on doing pre-med. The classes I need for my major is different than what medical school require. Will I be able to sign up for my pre-med courses as a Anthropology major. I signed up for Organic Chemistry and the schedule builder on UCD site let me do that, but do you guys think I might be dropped from the class later when they realize I don’t need the course for my major.

Thanks for reading!

@Flr09 You would be better served, I think, by asking your question to someone more specific at UCD. You should ask someone at UC Davis, your advisor for example, other pre-med and anthro students, etc.

If I can throw my penny into this, though, I can tell you that the UCD schedule builder lets you do a lot you may or may not be allowed to do (I signed up for a math class this Fall that I don’t have the pre-req for). That said, I don’t think that’s a problem in your case at the moment. If it let you register then that means OChem is open to all majors during pass 1 (I assume b/c it’s lower division and not too impacted a class) Besides, it’s not so strange for an anthro major to take chemistry.

What you should have done already, and if you haven’t, then what you should do now, is to make a plan with an advisor on how to achieve your goals, get all your med school req’s done. They’ll be able to help you extensively and answer specific questions like these, or point you in the right direction of who to ask.

No. At a UC some classes are restricted to majors only such as Theater and Engineering classes. But if the system lets you sign up for it then you can take it. They don’t care if you need it for your major.

For most majors you have a lot of free units available after satisfying the requirements, meaning units you can take in literally any class in the university that you are allowed to enroll in. If you go to the page http://anthropology.ucdavis.edu/undergraduate/curriculumold/b.s.-in-anthropology you’ll see they require 62 lower-division and 45 upper division units for the degree. That’s 107 units, and you need a min of 180 for a UC degree (you can’t take more than 225 units w/o special permission). So there are lots of units available to take anything you desire, including premed classes.

Of course it is a bit more complicated. Not only do you need to satisfy the requirements of your major, you need to take a certain number of upper-division units (in any field) for your degree depending on what college you are in. Letters and Science requires 64 units (see http://ls.ucdavis.edu/advising/formspetitions/GraduationRequirementSelfCheck.pdf) even though Anthro only specifies what 45 of them must be; the rest are up to you. And there are distribution requirements. It sounds more complicated than it really is, they’ll explain it all to you when you attend orientation.

Bottom line, though, is you’ll probably have no problem fitting in the premed requirements in addition to those of your major.

One additional note: you may have already taken some of the premed classes at your CC. Go talk to the Davis premed advisor, but many med schools like to see xfer students take additional classes in the math/science area at their 4-year since they are concerned the rigor at a CC may not match those at a university. Depending on how many of the premed classes you are taking at Davis this may not apply to you.