Transfer to Berkeley or come in as a freshman?!?

seafarer
Wed, 01 May 2013 22:51:10 +0000

Based on the reasons you’ve listed, community college sounds like a good plan.

Just thought I’d add that a motivated student can sometimes complete general requirements in less than two years at CC. My CC had an honors program which automatically enrolled students whose high school GPA was above a certain threshold. Students in the honors program had priority enrollment, so class availability was not an issue. Check to see if your CC has something similar.

As long as you do very well in CC and apply to several colleges in addition to Berkeley, you will likely have more options open to you when transferring, even if Berkeley isn’t one of them. By the way, the HAAS acceptance rate for transfers is ~20%, which is not too bad.

It’s a hard decision, but I think it’s both more reasonable and more desirable (in the long run) to transfer from a CC.