| Curiousgeorge,
For this entire thread, you are selling the "go to community college" idea. It doesn't look like you have much to do with Santa Cruz because as you admitted, alot of what you are saying is "from what you have heard." It seems that you have alot of friends who just didn't want to like the school and tell you about how bad it is. Alot of people on this board have negative things to say about UCSC and it seems people who have been there and gone through the process have a whole different perspective. This person is not looking for uninformed information. He wants to know if UCSC is like what people on this board say it is. It is not.
Do you know anyone going to CC? I sure do, and they cannot stand it! The only reason why one of my friends is going to CC is so he can be close to his family for financial reasons and because his mother has cancer. Keep in mind the people going to CC mostly do not want to be there. I would SERIOUSLY DOUBT that CC classes are comparable to Stanford level classes like you are implying.
I took a math course at my local CC and it was ridiculous how easy it was. The teacher told us the problems he would ask for the test next week (5 problems) and we could even use notes to just write down the problems and how to solve them on our note sheet. The class wasn't that bad as I just read in the back. The teacher was a good guy and always answered everyones' questions and responded quickly to emails. The worse element of that class were the students. 90% were unmotivated - sleeping, doing something else, not completing homework, failing miserably on, as I said, ridiculously easy tests. This is not the case at UCSC, and if they do fail, they will not be there for long.
CC is a very very mixed environment. There is no college experience and to get into UCLA and CAL, there really is no easy method because you are not guaranteed admittance with x gpa. With the other UC's its easier because of the TAP program where you get a 3.2 and you are in good shape. But personally, UCSB UCD and UCI are not much better than Santa Cruz. The rankings are relatively close and they all have their plusses and minuses. The fact that UC's give priority to CC transfers is true in some sense. But the number differences between average gpa of UC transfer and average gpa of CCC transfer are too small to really make an argument that Community college will put you in a better shape in transferring to UCLA/CAL.
Momuv2 - Thanks for the story. It is cool that you were so successful at UCSC, definitely giving some points back to UCSC from those that just call it a UC party school and nothing else. |