College Advice, What road should I take. CSU vs UC.

Jucery · 08-18-2012, 12:43 AM

So I will be filling up College applications in the a month or two. Now i wanted to go to UCSB, unfortunately I think my GPA (3.23 UC Weighted GPA) will be to low, even with a decent SAT(2000+) and a unimpacted major (philosophy) i think i have very low chance of getting in. Yeah I screwed up but now we are in the present and most likely it will come to this.

Option 1
Go to CSULB for 4 years and graduate.
(I am a Long Beach resident so as long as I have minimum requirements its not a problem.)

Option 2
Go to a CC for 2 years and then transfer to UCSB using TAG.

Option 3 (Unlikely)
Go to CSULB one year, transfer to a CC my sophomore year, so I can TAG UCSB.
Kinda unsure if this would work.

Option 4 (Also Unlikely)
Go to CSULB and hope for the best and try to transfer my Junior Year, although I have heard its hard to transfer from CSU to UC.

Tell me what option you would pick along with and advice or reasons why.

Lakemom · 08-26-2012, 10:03 AM

You have time to decide what you want to do and to a certain extent it may be dependent on your major. I actually started at UCSC and got my degree in nursing at SFSU so did the opposite of you.

The expression "A bird in the hand is worth 2 in the bush" comes to mind here. If you get accepted to long beach and not UCSB, I would go there if your major is not too impacted. Timewise, if you go to a cc, you may not be able to get into your classes so your admission to UCSB would get delayed for an unknown amount of time. My niece could not get into her classes at a cc in L.A. so left school to go to hairsalon school and "plans" to go back later.

Do really well at long beach and apply to grad school (depending on your major) at a better school later.

You could still try to transfer to UCSB if you wanted to while at long beach.

jleemd21 · 09-30-2012, 10:12 PM

i also heard transferring from csu to uc is really hard. another option you can do is just do a TAG like you said.

emberjed · 10-01-2012, 09:00 PM

Do not aim for a CC. Those are for people with GPAs and SATs half yours or for overconfident applicants who apply to, say, only Harvard and MIT with a 3.6, are shocked when they don't get in, and have nowhere else to go. Apply to one or two of the "lesser" UCs if you want, as well as CSU. Make sure to have one or two safeties, but those don't have to be CCs. There are lots of "A+ schools for B students" or whatever they're called.