W's and F's from 10+ years ago; a reason for denial during transfer from CC to 4year school

Transfer Students
1

hi all,

i attended csun with a scholarship right out of high school. i probably did one quarter of school and because of financial issues, i dropped out after two quarters. i’ve attended two other community colleges around LA area, got pregnant and eventually followed my then husband (navy) to move to san diego. in san diego, i also attended a junior college there, only to drop out to take care of my baby son and work part time to support my family.

i’m estranged now and my son is on his way to 9th grade. i finally put together the courage to go to school and my son is rooting for me to finish up my degree. i’ve been taking night classes and so far i’m around 25-30 units completed (3.5+ GPA) and hoping to transfer to USC next fall ('17).

with so many junior colleges attended in the past, i have a blemish on my overall transcript factoring in the GPA’s and W’s and F’s. W’s were safely dropped but I have around 10. i have two F’s and one of them is a physical education course (1 unit). my current standing of 3.5 will drastically change when factoring in the GPA’s from my previous schools. Now,

a) do admissions average out the GPA’s or toss these non-transferrable grades out due to ten plus years that i was out of school?
b) if factoring in the W’s, does the record reflect negative impact on my overall transfer status? at current junior college right now, i have exactly three W’s.
c) does my overall standing limit me greatly from going to top notch schools, such as UCB, UCLA and even USC?
d) would changing my major would help increase the odds of transferring?
e) i also have the opportunity to take the TAG/TAP program. would the program increase my chance of transferring to 4 year schools, factoring in my current status?

if any of you have/had a similar situation/scenario, please share your results with me. i will petition with csun and other community colleges that i’ve attended in the past to change the F’s to W’s. not too optimistic with the changes yet it’s still worth a damn shot.

help please. thank you all.

  • M.W.
2

When I started CC again in 2012, it had been almost 15 years since I had gone to school before. I had 2 Fs, a C, and a few W’s from 1998-2004. 1 of the Fs I retook, and got an A, so that helped a lot. The other just remained. Depending on your schools, you may be able to get Academic Renewal to remove old grades. The grades would still be on your transcript, but they wouldn’t affect your GPA. I’m sure schools put way more weight on grades of recent years, than 10 years ago. On the UC application, there’s a section where you can add notes. So in that section, I told them what my GPA was without factoring in old grades. My total GPA at the time on my application was like 3.65, but without those old grades, it was like 3.9+.

Most private schools like USC won’t honor Academic Renewal, but CSUs and UCs will.

UCLA loves non-traditional students (older, parents, military, etc). I got into and graduated from UCLA, and there are so many students with stories and grades similar to yours. They won’t automatically hold your past against you.

3

A lot of great universities take a holistic approach to non-traditional student applicants. I was told yesterday by an admissions director that they really don’t care about what happened 10 years ago (23.3 credits at F) because it is not an accurate representation of my academic abilities now. I spent the last 2 semesters at a private university improving my grades before attempting to transfer to an even better school. They indicated those 10 classes at 4.0 were far more important than my failures a decade ago!

Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Don’t give up hope!