This year I attended UC Davis as an freshman Electrical Engineering Student, as well as being a member of Navy ROTC. To get to the point, I had a horrible first year. My struggles began in ROTC, where I quickly realized I just wasn’t cut out for a career in the Navy. Unfortunately, I let my struggles with ROTC get in the way of my academics as well. For a long time, I found myself unmotivated in almost all areas of my life, and my grades payed the price. However, towards the end of this I did a lot of soul searching, and decided to take control of my life. Realizing that I was still an academically motivated individual, I made the difficult decision to disenroll from the Navy and withdraw from Davis next year to pursue a fresh start at community college. I am excited and motivated to do well in school again, but I am concerned with the ramifications this year could have on my future. My goal is to spend two years at community college, then transfer to another top university. However, I want to know if this is feasible even with my failing of classes this year. Even with stellar grades while at community college, I am worried that that this year leaves a permanent black dot on my future applications. How will failing classes at UC Davis affect my community college GPA? And how much will my Davis transcript affect my applications to top tier schools in two years? A broad range of possible target schools include the Ivies, MIT, USC, UCLA, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, and Georgia Tech. Thanks in advance for the help and brutal honesty is appreciated
First thing: you need to be in good standing at UCD to reapply to any UC. This means you need a 2.0 overall or better, and a 2.0 last term. If you don’t have that you need to retake some course or take more courses at a UC to get to 2.0. This is not that hard. You can take them at UCD or at another UC, including extension courses that are transferable. You need to talk to a UC advisor at Davis on exactly what you have to do. (BTW, if you got an F in a Davis course, I believe you can retake it at a CCC. Other courses at a UC where you got a D need to be taken at a UC.) Again talk with a Davis rep to make sure what I am saying is correct.
Once that is figured out, you can start at the CCC. It doesn’t have to be rectified when you start at a CCC, you just need to know the steps you need to take so you don’t mess up the courses on the CCC side.
Second thing: all your coursework at Davis will be added to your units at the CCC. So if you have too many you will be over the unit limit. Davis only allows 80 quarter units, the others have a range. So add up all your UC units (not Fs) and make sure that whatever you take at the CCC doesn’t put you over the max when you add the UC count to it.