Transferring from CC to Harvey Mudd, Caltech, MIT

Transfer Students
1

Hello,
So I’ve completely screwed up high school, grade-wise, and have two questions:

  1. If I spend two years at a CC and get great grades (I believe in capable of this, I’ve taken 9 AP) how much does high school factor in to the admissions process at a school like UCBerkeley or Cal Tech, MIt, Harvey Mudd?
  2. Do schools like the ones stated above even accept any transfers from CC?
    Any input helps, thanks for your time!
2

I don’t know much about Harvey Mudd of MIT, but I can tell you a little story about Cal Tech.

I went to a community college named East Los Angeles College and it’s in a pretty bad area (or rather, borders one). Just mere steps away is a section of housing called the “Maravilla Projects” and it’s known for being a gang infested low income area. Anyway, the school isn’t really known for that much in terms of academics. Last year though, one of the Asian students managed to transfer into Cal Tech and the school sure was excited about it - his name was on the marquee for about a month offering him congratulations. This tells me that Cal Tech doesn’t really care about the CC/high school or such. From what I recall, Cal Tech makes you take a math and science/physics exam, so it could have been that he just rocked the exams. Cal Tech does accept very few transfers, so I do imagine that his scores were very high. UC Berkeley doesn’t seem picky about the school either as long as you perform decently well.

3

For the UCs, junior level transfers do not need any high school things at all, although some base level requirements can optionally be fulfilled by passing grades in certain high school courses. For other schools, check their web sites. High school stuff diminishes in importance as you accumulate more of a college record.

ELAC is the CC alma mater of UCLA’s youngest student, who transferred to UCLA at age 12.

4

Thank you