well i'm new to california too within a few years, and I always thought as an out-of-stater "oh ucla. so so hard to get into. death. hard. death." but now that i am a CA rez, I see that calif. comm college transfer rates are much higher than freshman rates, it's a source of calm lol.
so yes, it's definitely easier to get in as a transfer--some programs have a 60%+ admit rate (overall i think is 34%?) but for freshmen it's like 22%. so yes, much easier. Then again, that is all dependent on the program you're going to transfer into lol.
going anywhere out of state (for some weird reason!!?!?!) makes it incredibly difficult to transfer into UCLA, even though they do take some people. The oos criteria are realllyyy high, so I'd say you should either a) go to another UC here that'll accept you and transfer from there b) go to a calif comm college (altho I will say besides the benefit of 'easier' admissions to the UC's, the social life is crap, but the classes ARE hard--coming from someone who has gone to 4 yr institutions too! lol or c) pick another school that you'd be equally happy at, because, after all is said and done, it is ONLY a school, and it'll still be there if you want to go to grad school
Don't stress so much.
