Unsatisfied UCer. UC to UC? CCC to UC? UC to Stanford, top tier?

Transfer Students
1

<p>I'm sure a lot of people are on this boat and would like to hear some opinions so please bear with the length of this post.</p>

<p>Here's my situation: Probably like other high school seniors I wasn't accepted to UCB or UCLA but to the other UC's and am not satisfied. I would like the opportunity to study at a school that will offer the best in terms of employment and salary. So here are the options that I have and the pros and cons that I've found, please comment and maybe even pick which one is best.</p>

<p>1) Go to lower UC and try to transfer to Berkeley, UCLA, Stanford, USC and other top tier universities.
+ UC experience
+ If not accepted anywhere for transfer, lower UC's still provide good education
+ I would think that transferring to USC, Stanford, east coast schools is easier if coming from lower UC than CCC
- UC to UC transfers are "unlikely" according to many</p>

<p>2) Go to lower CCC and try to transfer to Berkeley, UCLA, Stanford, USC and other top tier universities.
+ Save $$$
+ CCC to UC is easier esp. from a school with contracts with UCs
- CCC to stanford, east coast is unlikely
- If not accepted anywhere, may have to go to state school which is, in MY opinion, a step backward</p>

<p>3) Suck it up, finish the 4 years at the lower UC and work to go to top tier grad school
+ Don't have to deal with applying as transfer
- May be harder to get a good paying job from lower UC as opposed to top tier schools</p>

<p>In my case the lower UC is Davis and the CCC is De Anza, but others people's UC and CCC will vary. Please reply.</p>

2

<p>I would reccommend going to another UC and then eventually transferring. That's what I did and it is definitly possible.. the only reason it's perceived as unlikely is because it's not as easy to earn top notch grades at a UC so your stats might look less competitive. I also like this method because I feel so much more prepared for Berkeley because of my previous UC experience. Also some of my upper division units transfer over to Berkeley! But you might find that because you are doing so well at the UC that you might choose to stay there because your competitive grades will get you into a better grad school.</p>

3

<p>it's definitely possible to transfer from uc to uc. i've had everyone tell me that it's too hard to do, but then again, not many people try to transfer uc to uc. from uci, i applied to ucsd, ucla, ucb, and ucsb. i got into all of them except for ucb. my gpa was below the average mark for both ucla and ucsd (3.46 now but about 3.33 at the time i applied) but then again, the 3.6 "average" is merely what it claims to be. personally, i had some extracurriculars (board member of a cultural club), a few jobs, and some financial difficulty that i wrote about in my personal statement. </p>

<p>in high school my stupid counselor told me that i should just go to cc because i had no chance to get into any of the ucs i wanted to get into. true, uci wasn't my top choice as is the case with many aspiring high schoolers, but the uc freshman experience is too precious to give up like that. it takes some time to get the hang of the uc system and its rigorous demands, and you'll have just that much more experience under your belt if you decide to stay at your current uc. </p>

<p>i applied back in november with no expectation of getting accepted anywhere. i forgot about it until i had to update my work-in-progress and fall quarter grades, and then just waited it out until the middle of april when my admission notifications came out. it wasn't hard to do at all for me, and it wasn't hard at all for the other intercampus transfers in here either. </p>

<p>good luck!</p>

4

<p>There's a link I've posted at least three times in various places on CC which discusses the actual percentage acceptance rate for CCC to UC and "other 4-year" transfer students. With few exceptions (and particularly at UCLA and Cal), the acceptance rate for CCC students is close to the acceptance rate for 4-year students (within 4%, around 20-30%). </p>

<p>That aside, there's a lot to be said about being academically competitive. De Anza is among the top CCs in California, so it's not really anything to sneeze at. From what I understand, it has a good track record (maybe even an established program?) for transfers to UCs. You will most likely have much easier classes in CC than you would at the UC, but those easier classes allow you to spend more time actually learning the material instead of turning in work that might not help you as well as giving you more of a chance to do outside things like volunteering, holding a job, or taking more classes.</p>

<p>The major benefit of choosing a CC over a UC, cost aside, is that the UCs HAVE to set aside spots for the CC students, while they hold no such obligations for transfers from 4-years. I know it probably sounds distasteful, but if you know you want to graduate from Berkeley or UCLA, your best bet is to get the best grades you can and have the most intense CV you can have. If you think you can hack a 4.0 at a "lower" UC, then by all means! It's not impossible, just takes a lot more work than it probably would at a CC.</p>

<p>The bottom line with this is the same as it is with almost every issue on College Confidential: what do YOU want? No matter how good it might be to go to a CCC for 2 years and transfer, if all you want to do is go to a UC, then the experience would not be worth what you were giving up and it would be far better to just go to the UC and take it from there.</p>

<p>From your 3 options listed, 2 of them involve going to a "lower" UC. I urge you to consider that UC Davis is not as "low" a UC as you think it is, and it might not be so bad to graduate from there and then go on to grad school. If you are going to grad school, no questions, know that aside from school name, the most important things are results in your field of interest (ie, active involvement like published papers, work, etc.), test scores and your GPA.</p>

5

<p>Not everyone can get into UCLA and UCB. That's what the other UCs are for. It seems to me like you had unrealistic expectations on application time, and didn't care at all about finding safties you liked. There's nothing wrong with the middle UCs, it's not like going to a middle tier UC will make your life suck while the top tier UCs will automatically make you successful. You should pick a school in each range that you will enjoy (and I mean, there are a number of people on this board that picked UCD, UCSB, and UCI when they got accepted to Berekely and Los Angeles).</p>

<p>Anyway, the best option for you is #2. Guaranteed transfers to the mid-tier UCs are quite easy and you should be able to at least get in the middle tier UCs. If UCLA and UCB are really the schools you want to bet at, then go for it.</p>

<p>Ah well, I'm going to get back to watching the news about the Discovery Shuttle (you know that story that made news a few days about the guy reparing the shuttle - that was a UC Davis grad).</p>

6

<p>UC to UC or UC to USC/Stanford highly likely and not as uncommon as you might think.</p>

7

<p>Yeah, check out some of the UC forums or earlier posts on the Transfer forum to get an idea of the kind of stats the people who were accepted and denied had. Looking over the forum, I have a feeling a lot of people who applied did so for purely "ranking jump", so I don't think it would be out of the ordinary.</p>

8

<p>I was in the same boat...and I took choice #1. Currently I'm at UCSD and planning to apply to UCB with a 3.8 in mol. bio/german lit. minor.</p>

9

<p>I'd definately goto Davis. I'd personally rather spend 4 years at Davis than 2 years at a community college and 2 at Berkeley. I goto community college right now and I can't say I know anyone that is really happy there. Aside from the weak academics, there are many reasons not to go to a CC. </p>

<p>The choice is basically this:</p>

<p>1: UCD
worst outcome: spend 4 years at a good school
best outcome: spend 1 or 2 years at a good school and 2 or 3 years at a great school</p>

<p>2: CCC
worst outcome: spend 2 years at a horrible school and spend 2 more years at a good school
best outcome: spend 2 years at a horrible school and spend 2 more years at a great school</p>

<p>Unless UCB or UCLA are the only school you'd want to attend, the difficulty in transfering from a CCC to any non-UC or Cal State school makes up for the advantage a CCC might bring for UC admissions. At least it would for me.</p>

10

<p>^Yeah DM3, that's what went on in my head too. I mean, if I stay at Davis, the worst thing that could happen is that I graduate from a good school that has a great rep in Northern California. (I don't plan on moving out of Nor Cal, I pray that the housing prices go down). If I opt for a CCC, if I slip up, like I did in HS which is pretty much the reason I didn't get into Cal or UCLA, then I end up at a lower school than Davis. Anyway, I visited Cal, and I've come to the conclusion that it isn't for me. For a kid from the 'burbs, the whole urban inner city feel of Cal was not appealing to me.</p>