What can I do?

Transfer Students
1

<p>Let me start this out by saying I messed up HUGELY and I need all of the advice/help I can get. Crush my dreams, whatever, I need to know what my options are and how screwed I am. I don't even know if this post is in the right place but it has to do with a potential transfer.</p>

<p>I graduated high school in 2009, blah blah blah. I was rocking the high 80's in terms of grades, would be higher but, you know, gym class 0's brought me down. No extra curriculars because I hate everyone and my high school was mediocre. Oh wait, I was on the Quiz Bowl team for about a month. In all honesty, I want to be a housewife, but this isn't the 1950's and I'm going to have to get a job, and a decent job requires college.</p>

<p>I didn't want to go to college (being 17 and all, September birthdays hooray), so I opted for the community college half an hour from my house, figuring I'd try it out and make my dad happy. I HATEHATEHATEHATEHATEHATEHATED it there. Words cannot express how horrible that cesspool was. One of my professors was seriously willing to FAIL people out of the class (Freshman English) because of what PEN they liked to write with. I'm not joking. The <em>entire</em> staff was apathetic and unwilling to help anyone at all. they just shrugged and suggested I go talk to someone else. The teachers were all pompous a**clowns and way too full of themselves. It's a community college, not Yale or something.</p>

<p>I really hope 'real' colleges aren't like that, but I might not even get that far. In addition, it had a ridiculous attendance policy for a commuter-only college I think, and I frequently get sick to the point that I cannot drive. Like, hospitalized for two weeks while they soak me in a tub of ice so my brain doesn't boil sick. But it's gotten better over the years, and I can manage it better. If I can manage to not nearly die this fall, I want to go to a real college in Fall 2011. I'd like to clarify that there is nothing medically wrong with me, I have no conditions, I just have a really weak immune system and I can't regulate my body temperature all that well.</p>

<p>So the attendance policy states that if you miss X days (based on class frequency), you automatically fail the class, no matter what. I don't remember if you could request a withdrawal after that point but I hated all of my professors and doubted they would give me a withdrawal anyway. I missed X+1 days. I get sick, I can't help it, I really can't. So I stopped going. This was fall 2009.</p>

<p>Personal stuff happens, I get sick of sitting around all day watching cartoons and playing video games. I had my gap year (it'll be two gap years but whatever, it worked, I'm mature enough to handle it now.) So now I'm feeling like I'm ready to go to a 'real' college, and I would be applying for the Fall 2011 admission to my college of choice. I have no idea what to do, so I go talk to my old high school guidance counselor because she's much better at this stuff than I am and she's a friend. I'm all pumped to retake the SAT and everything this October because when I took it my senior year it was a last minute "Oh hey, I might as well take it but it's not like I'm going to college or anything right?" thing and I took it like any other test (even state ones!), in my pajamas and barely awake. I don't even remember my scores, I didn't care at all, but I know they weren't 100% but whatever.</p>

<p>So I go to my old counselor. We don't know if I will have to transfer my stunning community college GPA of 0.0 because I dropped out. I gained no credits, I didn't even stay for half the semester, and they were all (minus the one) classes I didn't want or need to take, but because I signed up so late, they were all that was left and I needed to be full time or they'd kill my family or something. Probably health insurance related. </p>

<p>But now I want to go to an awesome college and I'm pretty sure I will never be able to because there is absolutely no way I'm going back to that community college to try those horrible classes over again. I'd rather skin myself and roll around New York City than go back to that community college. Keep in mind it's not the curriculum, but the people I had to learn it from. I'm one of those students that sleeps through everything then manages to get a 100 on a major test. Curriculum is not an issue for me.</p>

<p>So, here is the tl;dr version: Graduated HS a year ago, went to community college (a SUNY if you must know) for half a semester, dropped out, earned no credits. The college I would like to go to in Fall 2011 is out of state and I think credits are unlikely to transfer anyway.</p>

<p>Do I have to retake the horrible classes with horrible people I hated horribly in order to get my (horrible) GPA up to something higher than a 0.0?
Can I somehow get my time at the community college to be overlooked, seeing as I didn't <em>do</em> anything, and go on to the college I want with my perfectly acceptable HS transcript?
Should I work on finding a career that doesn't require a college education? What can I do? Is there anything I can do? Help!</p>

2

<p>Do you have a transcript from the CC for that semester and if so does it show a bunch of F’s or W’s for the courses? </p>

<p>Do you have other options for community colleges in your area or are you willing to move for a different one? Professors are always hit or miss at any college and it helps to do some research before selecting classes using sites like ratemyprofessor.com to get an idea of what the professor’s teaching style is like.</p>

3

<p>You could always transfer to a state school. Sometimes they have just as simple of admissions requirements as a community college. I’m sure this happens all the time- situations come up, people decide college is not right for them right now. You could start out at a state school and then transfer somewhere better if you want to go somewhere else. You’ll just have to look around at different colleges. You’d be surprised how many different forms of admission schools have for different types of students or situations.</p>

4

<p>To be honest, I have no clue. If it wasn’t mailed to me, I don’t have it, and I don’t want to drive 45 minutes to wait 4 hours to be told to go to twelve different offices to be told that they can’t do anything for me. It’s also possible that I threw it out. There’s another SUNY school about an hour (I think) north of me that a few of my favorite high school teachers attended or worked at, but it was all art programs and while I’m awesome with ceramics I don’t have a portfolio and I don’t really want to go into art.</p>

<p>I was under the impression that if I had a 0.0 I wasn’t going to be able to go anywhere, even another SUNY school. I know I got a letter at the end of the fall 09 semester saying I was on Academic Probation and couldn’t take more than 12 credits in the spring semester (which I didn’t register any classes for.) I also got something saying that the $5,000 grant that I was offered and didn’t use (which was actually a loan. Grant =/= loan, SUNY.) was reduced to $0. The CC has a website that you can access your grades and such from but the website is just sooo poorly designed and impossible to navigate, it looks like something a 7th grader could have made in a computer class.</p>

<p>Finally figuring my way into my account, it seems that I do have a transcript, lined with beautiful, bright red F’s. Somewhere lower on the page lists my GPA as 0.00.
Attempted Hours: 12.00
Passed Hours: 0.00
Earned Hours: 0.00
GPA Hours : 12.00
Quality Points: 0.00
GPA: 0.00</p>

<p>That’s repeated four times with slightly different wording, under Transcript Totals (Undergraduate), and beneath the scores reads: Unofficial Transcript</p>

<p>I didn’t really have the option to pick what professors I wanted. I could literally pick between 6 classes, none of which I wanted or needed to take. I would also rather work at a McDonalds for the rest of my life than go back to that school. I really would.</p>

<p>The school has a minimum GPA of 2.0 to transfer credits, I don’t know if that’s incoming or outgoing. If I’m not transferring anything, I shouldn’t have to transfer anything, right? I’m sure other people have been in this position before, but from a real college, not 13th grade as it’s called around here.</p>

<p>Also, to make myself feel better I’m going to remark that someone I know said that the school has roughly an 80% drop-out rate. No clue where that came from though, as every site with the school on it seems to have it’s stats blank. Also, a SUNY (State University of New York I believe) is a state school, right? It’s both a community college and a SUNY. After all the bashing I’ve done I don’t really want to give the name of the school lest they leave me angry voicemails or something.</p>

<p>EDIT: Found the article in the local paper stating graduation rates. This SUNY only has 15.5% of it’s students graduate with a degree. Rates don’t count for transfer students.</p>

5

<p>Doesn’t sound like a great school. I’d move and go to a CC somewhere else. You are right in that none of those classes will transfer but you will be hard pressed to get into any worthwhile 4 year with a semester of F’s like that since it will count against you in admissions. You are basically going to need to go to a CC somewhere else and do a few semesters with GOOD grades to bring the gpa up high enough to transfer into a 4 year you’d be willing to go to.</p>

<p>And it isn’t really fair to claim CC’s aren’t “real” colleges. The one you went to just doesn’t sound so great. I was a high school dropout and I just finished a couple years at a CC and it was an amazing experience, better than if I went to the big state U in the same city even. You get what you put into it.</p>

6

<p>If I can get into another SUNY school I will, but my biggest concern is if I have to fix my grade at the first one before I even have the chance to move to another SUNY school. If what happened at school #1 has to be fixed at school #1, it isn’t going to happen. If what happened at school #1 can be fixed at school #2 because they are both SUNY schools, it can happen. I was just typing in a panic this morning, and I really don’t expect anyone at school #1 to help me figure it out because schools are businesses first and foremost in my opinion.</p>

<p>So, if I <em>can</em> go to another CC and fix things I will, but I don’t know if I can, and that is my issue. But thank you for trying to help.</p>

<p>I read on a site I found off of the college search engine here that the GPA doesn’t transfer, that you start over with a new slate, but I’m sure I’m just twisting that to mean something it doesn’t because I want it to mean I don’t have to worry about school #1.</p>

7

<p>When you transfer to new schools, your gpa does not transfer. However, there is something called a cumulative GPA which is all of your grades from every college ever combined into one cumulative gpa and usually graduate schools want to know what that is.</p>

<p>People that usually bomb their first college semester start over somewhere else, aka bomb that first 4 year school semester and instead start over at a CC and do 2 years to get an associate degree while they figure out what they want to do. You then explain in your transfer apps why you had that one bad semester and what you learned from it and hopefully the new 4 year you transfer to will understand and see you had upward grade progression once you started over.</p>

8

<p>That kind of makes sense, actually. I know what I’d like to do, but any school with a program for it that’s worth anything would never accept me, even if I didn’t bomb at the CC. I’m not big on commuting (for obvious reasons, heh) and I just don’t know what to do. I’m going to keep telling myself that if I’m not transferring anything, it’s not a transfer and it shouldn’t count. I know it’s probably not true but it makes me feel better.</p>

<p>Moving is not an option for me just to go to a CC that I’m going to be miserable at and probably doesn’t provide housing. I mean, I could always email someone at the college I want to go to and explain the circumstances and hope they understand, right? But that probably doesn’t happen ever. </p>

<p>If I can’t get to anywhere but the college that I dropped out of (for transportiation, locations, whatever reasons) then I may as well stop bothering with it and get used to retail or something. I’d rather not go at all than go back to the CC, and if going back to that CC would be my only option I’m better off just forgetting the whole thing and going back to playing video games.</p>

<p>But really, thank you, I probably never would even have considered finding another CC.</p>

9

<p>Some CC’s are tiny, some are medium sized, and some are huge and have housing. My CC has 43,000+ students at it. The larger they are, generally the more course and student life options there will be as well as different professors teaching the same class which gives you a better chance of finding the good one to learn from by reading student reviews online.</p>

<p>Plus, if you are gonna give up and just go work retail, why not move somewhere where you have more options for schools to take classes at and at least work full time while taking a few classes part time?</p>

10

<p>I don’t know what to say to that. I re-typed this post about 700 times detailing how socially inept and terrified of people I am only to conclude that no matter what I say or do I’m screwed and maybe if I was supposed to go to college I would have gone there and not messed up in the first place. </p>

<p>I was miserable at that community college and that seems like to only viable option to get my gpa up enough to get into a worthwhile school, and I simply can’t do that. </p>

<p>Sorry for wasting your time.</p>

11

<p>Alright well I’ll leave it at the fact that I was originally a socially-inept, anti-social, pot smoking, not to mention depressed high school drop out. I went and worked retail and corporate type jobs for a number of years to get an idea of what I wanted to do in my life before going back to school. I got a 3.9 gpa now, was student body president, have no fears about public speaking, have more friends than I can keep track of, and have two great schools I am deciding between on transfer and I feel like the sky is the limit as far as career options go. If <em>I</em> can change that much, than you sure can if you want to make it happen. Good luck!</p>

12

<p>Don’t give up! You don’t have to go to the same community college. US community colleges have an open admission policy. If you had 20 years of Fs you would still qualify. Go to another college, work hard for 2 years and you’ll be able to transfer to a tier 1 school. </p>

<p>You can do this. You’re not the only person to be in a bad situation like this.</p>

<p>EDIT: You should talk to whichever school you end up in about your medical issues. I’m sure a verification from the hospital will excuse you from some basic attendance requirements.</p>

13

<p>I would say the simplest thing to do would be calling the school you want to go to and ask if you can apply as a first year. That would be much simpler, and since you are not transferring any credit anyway, that shouldn’t matter much. I have a friend who was in your exact same situation (although she had Extra Curriculars), and now she is starting her first year at Wellesley this fall.</p>

<p>Also, I wouldn’t tell you to go back, instead, find another college. Also, ratemyprofessors.com is YOUR BEST FRIEND. I’m the type of person who will either score straight As if I like my professors and get straight Fs if I dislike them; <em>not joking</em> so use this tool before choosing your classes at ANY college.</p>

<p>Good luck! =)</p>