<p>I’m a semester away from finishing an associates at a California community college. Unfortunately I did not have my priorities straight and will only be finishing with a 3.0 gpa. HS was the same, I never saw myself as going to a 4 year so never fully applied myself until very very recently when I finally figured things out.</p>
<p>I started working full time right out of high school and I’m now kicking myself for the decisions I made. I wish I could wipe the slate clean and start over! I really want to get a degree in Finance or Computer Science (computational finance/financial engineering) from a top tier school.</p>
<p>I’m going to transfer to a 4 year, SDSU or SJSU, would it be possible to do extremely well for a year or two and then transfer to a top tier school? (NYU, Penn, North Western, MIT, etc). Or have I pretty much screwed myself and am I going to have to go for a Masters from one of these schools since I’ll be so close to obtaining my bachelors?</p>
<p>Any answers or input is appreciated! I must have searched through 100+ pages looking for a similar situation but couldn’t find one.</p>
<p>I’d say work your @$$ off and do graduate school at an ivy. Your GPA is pretty much impossible to go to a top tier right now. My friend with a 3.89 was rejected from Cornell last year (Ivy) but fortunately, every UC accepted him. I’d advise you to leave that dream for your master, and keep doing well once you transfer to SD/SJSU to show grad school your effort.</p>
<p>yeah you have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting admitted into a top-tier school right now. My advice is do decently at one of the CSUs and then do your masters somewhere else. You could shoot for SLO or CPP but they’ll probably reject you too with your stats.</p>
<p>i’m not here to judge you, and i have no clue what your circumstances were, or why you made the decisions you did. But the facts remain that no top-tier school will accept you at this point. Your GPA is far too low, sorry.</p>
<p>Just work harder, nothing much you can do. There really isn’t a shortcut around it.</p>
<p>You need to raise that a lot higher. So get as many A’s as possible.</p>
<p>Also you will need a high GMAT score when applying. So study your ass off.</p>
<p>Another thing is experience. If you can land a really nice finance position out of undergrad, that would be great. Good experience might outweigh a mediocre GPA. However, I don’t know if SDSU or SDJU would able to take you there.</p>
<p>Also MFE programs requires a lot of math. A degree program in finance will not even come close to what it requires. I would minor or double in math. However, you might not be able to hack it.</p>
<p>Have you actually been accepted by both SJSU and SDSU? It usually takes a considerably higher CCC GPA than 3.0 to get admitted to either of these two universities unless you are applying from within their service areas and while that is possible for one, it would certainly not be for both.</p>
Yep (if you can get in at all, coming from a CC and CSU with a 3.5 GPA [max]).</p>
<p>I also second Lemaitre1’s point. It’s unlikely you have been/will be accepted to both SJSU and SDSU with a 3.0.</p>
<p>My advice? Apply to Davis, Irvine and SB. You’ll likely have a better chance there (even though you can’t TAG) than at those CSUs because of the local service area preference.</p>
<p>As people above have said, transferring to an upper-tier ivy is out of the question, which leaves the grad school option. Here are the pre-reqs for Berkeley’s MFE program: [Application</a> Requirements, Master of Financial Engineering Program - Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley](<a href=“Master of Financial Engineering Program | Berkeley Haas”>Master of Financial Engineering Program | Berkeley Haas). I’m not certain, but you are probably already screwed for the top-tier MFE and MBA programs. </p>
<ol>
<li>Your GPA is low</li>
<li>You’d need a GMAT well above 700 (doable)</li>
<li>Stellar work experience is basically required (2+ years). Unfortunately, it’s extremely difficult to get the type of work experience they like (Goldman, McKinsey, etc.) without having gone to a top tier undergrad. You certainly will not get it out of SDSU or SJSU.</li>
</ol>
<p>Any of these things individually would usually be enough to give an applicant a really tough time. Unfortunately, you have to contend with all three.</p>
<p>Remember, you’re competing against people who’ve had school figured out since they were 8 years old and finished calculus in high school. </p>
<p>It would be helpful if you have a particular career in mind. Since 60%+ of MFE’s end up in Ibanking/hedge funds i’m assuming you want to do something with those?</p>
<p>As others have said, transferring from SJSU or SDSU after a few semesters to a top tier school is highly improbable. I would suggest doing extremely well now wherever you end up and shoot for good grad schools. Finish up as many math prereqs you can and get damn good grades. If you really want to do a MFE, then don’t major in Finance as an undergrad like the a poster said above. Take some courses in econ and finance as electives, or get a minor in either field, and then choose a more analytical major such as Stats, Math, Comp Sci, etc. </p>
<p>You’ve got a lot of work to do to reach your goal but with determination and persistence to fix your previous academic standing, it can be done.</p>
<p>the only thing i could think of is what my friend did,</p>
<p>he basically made the same mistake as you and figured he would scrap everything he had previously done at CC.</p>
<p>he totally changed the CC he was going to and gave it his all to transfer with a 4.0
hr finished his requirements and applied to all the UC’s. Im pretty sure he was accepted to all of them(UC’s) Last i heard he was going to ucla.</p>
<p>Basically he left all his sunk costs behind and started fresh. to tell you the truth he just reported his grades from the New CC he was going, and never mentioned his previous grades at the cc he went to before. I dont know if this is morally wrong or anything but who cares he is at UCLA. He obviously only sent the New CC’s transcript when he was accepted. Its worth a shot if you wanna try it.</p>
<p>I do care that your friend did that. People can follow whatever morals they want on a personal basis, but that directly interferes with other student’s potential acceptance and is in fact a viable form of “cheating” admissions. It’s also kind of like a slap in the face to students who actually follow protocol and report ALL their CCs despite having bad grades. I actually hope that the UCs institute a better system to check for accredited transcripts (very likely in the somewhat near future) to prevent students from doing this. Additionally, if they ever do randomly check (which they already currently do), your friend’s degree will most likely be taken away from them.</p>
<p>Im not encouraging what he did, but people do it all the time such as those student who leave college all together and come back after a few years to a new CC. They dont report their prior grades, which is probably not fair to those who report all their grades. But i dont think they’ll catch him because he was accepted and is attending i dont think they’ll go into further investigation if he is already attending the school.</p>
<p>Its not morally or ethically right, but ppl do it all the time</p>
<p>There is no reason to believe that they would not run his name through the National Student Clearinghouse just because he is now attending UCLA. They may select a certain number of students at random every year to confirm that the students accepted did not get admitted through academic dishonesty. If he is found out in the next two years he will be expelled the same day and notation will be made on his transcript that the reason for expulsion was academic dishonesty.</p>
<p>But he does not only have to worry about the next 2 years, he needs to worry about the next forty to fifty years as well because if UCLA at any time discovers his deception they will revoke his degree. That means for the rest of his working life when he states that he is a graduate of UCLA and a potential employer contacts UCLA to confirm it they will be told that his degree was revoked for academic dishonesty, ruining any chance of employment.</p>
<p>If the first community college was also a CCC it will almost certainly come to light at some point. It is only a matter of time before UC, CSU and CCC establish a common data base that will automatically flag current and past students of CCCs who attended multiple schools and check their applications submitted by computer to either a UC or CSU to make sure they listed all the CCCs they attended on their UC and CSU applications.</p>
<p>^ Which is exactly the reason I had my transcripts from 2006 sent to UCD for 2011. I was living in NJ at the time and attend a CC there for one semester. I also got UC credit for two of my classes which helped boost my GPA. The UC app asked for all my transcripts and they got them asap.</p>
<p>And I wonder how this would affect someone who did this and was awarded scholarship money, grants, etc? Would the school require them to be paid back? Damn.</p>
<p>well, i guess if they did any further investigation they would find out, but the things you are mentioning would almost never happen, since they wouldnt go through your records after you have been accepted(it would take forever to check everyone), and what use would it be to them to check after he graduates it wouldn’t make any sense. </p>
<p>Anyways Im pretty sure if they did expel people on the basis of academic dishonesty, half the school would be at risk of expulsion, since a majority of the students have lied somewhere on their app.</p>