Re-visiting CC with new major after transferring to UCSD and failing miserably. Options?

College Confidential Community
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Hello all, I Did 2 years at a local CC, was on the TAG program to get into UCSD for pre pharmacy. Long story short, I transferred with a 3.6 + gpa, got to UCSD with no intention of being a pharmacist besides my dad being one and seeing him make a good income. I ended up on academic probation when I just didn’t care about going to school, drugs, video games (input excuses here) etc.

I took 1-2 years off, decided to go back into UCSD to finish the major, realized I made this decision without much thought, and ended up not going to my classes for the end of that quarter. So, after taking 5 years off of college, working at Sony while not taking classes (random night classes for CS major here and there) I’m ready to go back to school full time as a Computer Science major, and considering I’m 28, not messed up anymore. All the issues causing me to screw around once I got to UCSD are no longer in my life, or an issue.

My question being, what chances do I realistically have on getting back into UCSD (after dropping out once, making some BS essay to get back in and dropping out twice). Now I’m in the position where I cannot get Fin-Aid because I have too many transferable units at my CC. Even if I do a year with 4.0’s, should I even try and re-appeal to get back into UCSD? Or should I be looking at a local cal state? Since my reason of choosing UCSD, was getting into grad school, and thinking that UC would look better than a random CSU for pharmacy school. Going from 4.0’s in CC, to basically dropping/failing all UCSD courses, and doing a year for of CS lower division GE’s getting 4.0’s. Would I just be looking to re apply as a starting transfer student when looking at other CSU’s or is carrying the weight of screwing up so badly at UCSD just going to deny any chances of getting into a 4 year university?

I know UCSD is still an option, but I don’t really want to finish a CS degree there considering it can be done at a CSU, but also not sure if that is even a possibility considering how I wasted so much time/getting bad grades at my first 4 year school that I transferred to. Any advice from anyone with a similar history would be helpful. Thanks in advance!

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Frankly? Your chances blow.
The UC system is generous with second chances. Students have over a year to satisfy general composition requirements, you can retake most failed courses for full credit, there is support for gap years, enrollment deferral, you can petition for retroactive withdrawal, etc.

Third chances, however, without extenuating circumstances, are much more rare. Your decision to argue for a return to the system before you were truly interested in it is going to put a big red flag on your file. You simply won’t look like a good investment of the university’s time and resources.

Why would you want to return specifically to the campus that was such a bad fit for you? A CSU or a local community college would likely be better choices. Why do you want to go to graduate school anyway?

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I’m not seeing any indication from the OP of a direction in his/her life any different from the past two failed attempts. I see what the OP does not want (what was available to OP in the past) but not the direction he/she wants to pursue. I bet this was also the context for the first two “chances” . To OP, unless returning to school is purposeful-that is, you are strongly motivated to get to a certain specific goal, you are unlikely to succeed. College won’t provide that for you.

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Your transcript/GPA may keep you out of CS at a lot of CSUs. They are competitive and have unit caps for transfers.

UCSD may be your best shot - though gaining access to CS there may be tough too. I’d sit down with someone at the school and see what your options are. Visit a CSU or 2 as well and see what they think.