With hopes of gaining admission to UCLA as a transfer student, Brian Bauman was taking 20 units per term at Southwestern Community College, working two jobs, and participating in the drum line before he received his acceptance letter last spring.
Now a fourth-year classical civilization student, Bauman was drawn to UCLA both by its large, pretty campus and the opportunity to play in the marching band. Furthermore, the campus was located in Los Angeles, “a place with a lot of action,” he said.
However, Bauman said that the college transfer process is more complex than applying in high school and advised potential applicants to stay involved with work and extracurricular activities and find a major that fits them prior to their transfer.
For Ryan Nguyen, a fourth-year anthropology student, California’s college student transfer system enabled him to transfer last fall from Riverside Community College to UCLA, but the process wasn’t as simple as it is for incoming freshmen.
“With transfer students, you’re more on your own,” Nguyen said.
He said that there are a lot more tools and resources, such as counseling for incoming freshmen, who are given four years to build their application, whereas transfers are more independent.
According to a report released in August by the Institute for Higher Education Leadership and Policy, the admissions process for students planning to transfer to a California public university has become a decentralized and complex process that forces students to take more classes than necessary, while draining the state’s financial resources.
The report, titled “Crafting a Student-Centered Transfer Process in California: Lessons From Other States,” is an attempt to help shape the policy discussion at the state legislative level about improving the community college transfer system in California, said Nancy Shulock, director of the institute and co-author of the report.
Shulock said that while there may not be a fully centralized system, the “balance point” should be shifted closer to the students’ needs instead of toward the decentralized transfer policies that vary with different colleges.
If a community college student wants to transfer to a nearby university that has an agreement with their college and their desired major, the current system works well, Shulock said.
But that is often not the scenario transfer students face.
Because the system is based on institution-to-institution agreements, some units and credits may be accepted by some universities but not by others, she added. If transfer students fail to negotiate with the university to accept their credits, they’ll have to take more courses at a time when the college system is facing financial troubles and overcrowded classes, she said.
Nguyen said that it is harder for transfers to graduate on time because they have to start over and take new classes if they want to change their major after being accepted to a university. He added that they are also given less flexibility than freshmen and sophomores in changing majors.
But getting more students to transfer to a university is important because the California economy is projected to be short 1 million workers with bachelor’s degrees between now and 2025, said Colleen Moore, a research specialist for the institute and co-author of the report.
Although they may lack sufficient resources, students can take advantage of Web sites such as ASSIST, which helps students to find transferrable courses, and see their college’s transfer counselor, Moore said.
Facing just such a lack of resources in college counseling, Bauman said that he received help from his parents, who would read his personal statements and provide moral support.
The report recommends that universities accept associate’s degree credits, so that a student who wants a bachelor’s degree in psychology should be eligible for both associate’s degree and transfer requirements, Moore said.
The California transfer system requires students to know early on where they want to go and what major they want, but that’s not realistic for many students, Moore said. Even if a student were qualified for his first-choice school, there is no guarantee he would be admitted because of the varying requirements for schools, she added.
Students seeking to transfer to UCLA need to plan early, utilize time management and get difficult classes out of the way first, said Rosa Pimentel, associate director of undergraduate admissions at UCLA.
UCLA admits transfers directly to specific majors, so applicants have to know what lower division preparatory courses to take at their community college, Pimentel said.
Some students make the mistake of delaying the necessary classes until the summer, forgetting UCLA’s requirement that preparatory coursework has to be finished by the spring before their transfer, she said.
She said that about 60 percent of transfer applicants to UCLA apply for a competitive major such as English, history, and the life sciences, which require a higher-than-average GPA for admission: about 3.7.
“From our perspective, the major they choose rarely has any direct impact on their career,” she said.
As an example, Pimentel said that students who get into medical school can major in subjects like art and English, not necessarily just the life sciences. She said that applicants need to deeply explore what they want to do in the future and whether or not they need to have a specific major in order to do that.
“If they broadened their decisions to a less competitive major then it could be better for them. If there’s risk involved, they should think about what other major they could get into.”
But for transfer students who are admitted to the university of their choice, the process can be worth it.
Bauman said he was ecstatic the day he got his acceptance letter to UCLA and found out that all his credits were transferred.
“It was worth the hard work and still worth it, and I’m thankful for each day I have here. … If you have really want something and have the will to work for it, you can reach your goals. … It’s not just something that happens in movies.”