<p>Cool, thank you. Naw, I was just massively exaggerating.</p>
<p>And cool, thank you. Don’t put too much mind into it getting easier- a degree is like a gun, no one cares you have one till you pull it out and shove in their face. luck to you.</p>
<p>Everything seems to be working out for me. Being a part of a junior college has been nice in that you’ll find some professors who care more about teaching than about research. </p>
<p>My degree, aside from its practical value, is kind of a mind-cleanser for me. I just happen to be learning some good skills along the way. With some ambition I can do lots of stuff with it, as can anyone else.</p>
<p>UCs are expensive, I live with a single mom, and plus, I didn’t think I could get into any UCs with a 3.1 GPA in high school. I didn’t stand a chance against peers who had 3.8-4.0 GPAs (some even got higher than 4.0 due to AP courses). Also, I really didn’t want to take the SAT or the ACT.</p>
<p>I decided to go to a CC because I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and going to a CC allowed my to explore classes in every subject and see what really resonated with my personality. I don’t regret my six years at CC at all. I learned to much about myself and the world, and now I’ll be starting at UCSD in the Fall for bioengineering. Life is good. I <3 community college.</p>
<p>soprano, we seem to be in a similar financial situation, did you get a beautiful financial aid package?</p>
<p>I had an efc of 0 and got a little over $20,000 in grants, $5,000 from a private scholarship and another 5.5 Gs in subsidized loans.</p>
<p>Oh and I forgot, I’m a transfer because I’m a super dropout and super poor-I’m pretty ugly too.</p>
<p>Andrea the Anaconda, I admire your positive will to the CC-out of curiosity, how does one find themselves with a passion for bioengineering? I think it’s totally cool, but do you have like glass eye or are you missing a finger or something? I think it’ll be an interesting reason considering how it’s related to your inward and outward growth. </p>
<p>Peace.</p>
<p>@berdson. You are correct, indeed! A medical condition ultimately brought me to bioE. I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes halfway through my time at CC and started wearing an insulin pump soon after. Loving how much easier my insulin pump made the treatment of my diabetes, but also knowing that the technology behind it should be alot better gave me a desire to advance technologies in the health industry. After some interwebbing, I found bioengineering and knew it was the perfect for me. Been on the bioE track for 3 years now and happier than ever. </p>
<p>Before finding bioE I tried being an English major, a music major, and an astronomy major. As cool as the others were, bioE has always just felt right. Passion goes a long way.</p>
<p>Sorry for the long story… you were curious and I just like telling it and p.s. I super sucked in high school too.</p>
<p>I’m sorry to hear that. But cool indeed-no need to be sorry. I spent much of my youth on a TPN IV through a pick-line 23 hours a day. </p>
<p>I actually meant super dropout as in I didn’t even make it to high school. You can read all about it on my infamous “Anybody a Junior High Dropout?” thread. </p>
<p>Good luck in the study, I actually wanted to ad that as another major, but I’ll probably go back to a CC and transfer to a CSU for a second bacc after getting my first at UCI. Or just conform to my short attention span.</p>
<p>So after 750 views and 29 posts, I got 7 serious responses.</p>
<p>Damn, I suck.</p>
<p>Anyone else?</p>
<p>I’ll share my story I guess. Nothing too special. Basically went through the first three years of high school, being there just because I had to be. I felt like I was going more for sports than I was for school. Earned mostly C’s and D’s. Finally senior came around and all of the people I had known since middle school were talking about college applications and what their number one schools were. Long story short, I had a major epiphany senior year and I realized I was selling myself short and that I had a lot more potential than I was acting on. A year and a half later, I have a 3.9 at cc and applying to UCLA, Berkeley, and guaranteed into UCSD. Good luck to everyone on this thread hope we all get into our schools of choice</p>
<p>Hey Berdson, how’s it going?</p>
<p>I’m at a Community College because I’ve NEVER taken my academics seriously, and this stems way back to my elementary school days. I developed a terrible habit of dashing for the hills at the sight of a challenge, severely lacking any self-confidence, and simply working to achieve the bare minimum - I was happy so long as I passed even if it meant receiving a C-. I’ve also had a strong sense of inferiority with other classmates, always assuming they were more intelligent than I am because they seemed to grasp concepts much faster than I could.</p>
<p>My defeatist attitude combined with my laziness made school unbearable that I even barely graduated. I failed one class my junior year from never doing homework or half-assing big projects, leaving me no choice but to make up for it doing a night class for a couple weeks. Additionally, I was failing math all throughout high school, and therefore spending every summer making up for it. Pretty funny now that I’ve declared an Engineering major, which is notoriously math-intensive…</p>
<p>Sucked ass at the SAT’s, knew I wouldn’t get in anywhere, opted to do the CC -> CSU/UC route. Effed around at CC for YEARS since I rarely attended lectures and failed classes. Saw my peers from high school graduating from college, some going on to medical/law/pharmacy school, and I was feeling left behind. Even kids I KNEW who weren’t all too bright were pursuing great things, so I decided to buckle down, carefully plan my future, and to reallllly stick with it.</p>
<p>Present day? I’m nearing the tail end of my experience in community college, looking to transfer to UCSD as as Structural Engineering major. Was it easy? Helllll to the nah. But despite all my screw-ups and failures and time-wasting was a valuable journey of self-discovery that’s made me acutely self-aware of my potential, which I would hate to go to waste.</p>
<p>As I posted in similar threads about my background, I didn’t take high school seriously and spent years wasting time, money, and energy into an unproductive life. I was severely injured my senior year playing football and eventually dropped out. Here I am now, at 30 years old, attending UCD to get my degree. It’s been hard, but life outside the walls of academia is even harder. </p>
<p>@hotchocolate … LMAO! Your high school math experience sounds like mine. I HATED math with a passion, attended other classes just to pass, and devoted most of my time to sports and girls. I failed algebra freshman year and barely passed it my sophmore year. The only math class I did well in was geometry (got an A somehow lol) and didn’t even know calculus existed. This coming from a now aspiring Statistician! 
</p>
<p>Just goes to show you how funny and surprising life can be. Good luck with things in your final CC days and with UCSD.</p>
<p>rescinded.</p>
<p>The reason i am a transfer is because i was sooooo lazy in HS. Never did my HW and never studied and managed still to have a weighted GPA of 3.2. However i was just going to school because i had to, and at the time would much rather skate than go to school. I excelled in elementary but i believe that after moving around from school to school at the end of elementary that i lost my motivation for school. I just didn’t care anymore and had it with school. In high school i started hanging out with kids who also had no interest in school, i remember after school we would always walk home as a group and each of us lived farther and farther from each other so one by one our group would shrink until it was 4:10 which is when i was on my way home being i was the farthest from school. We’d pull pranks and lil jokes on each other and just have fun times everyday! After sophmore yr i still hung out w my frosh buddies but eventually started hanging out with my athletic peers (water-polo, football) we formed good friendships and would just hang out whenever. Senior year i found out who my closest friends were and we banded as our own group now no longer belonging to the social classes of HS, we were our own group and we would often combine with whatever click on campus we wanted to, everyone knew everyone practically. </p>
<p>Come senior year all my friends who care about school are stressing out about “the SAT’s and ACT’s test scores” and im just like whatever im going to a CC (big mistake but also good) and so i never applied to any CSU or UC, though most of my friends attended UC’s and CSU’s with a couple going to private schools outta HS. My first yr at CC i still had the crappy study habits i carried with me in HS which was no studying, no HW unless it was mandatory… and just getting by. Fortunately i ended up with only 2 C’s and the rest A’s and B’s. It wasn’t until my 3rd semester at a CC did i start to take school seriously and am now aiming to transfer to a UC. :0</p>
<p>I ■■■■■■ around too much in high school.</p>
<p>I didn’t even try to get into the UC out of high school. I got into a CSU, but I decided I that I was able to do better than that. Plus, my parents could have afforded a UC for me, but I have triplet siblings, 6 years younger than me. I know saving a bit of money on my education will help when it’s time for them to go to college.</p>
<p>As for why I want a degree: I want a job that pays well. I like the way I live now, and I want to try to keep living comfortably. Besides that, I also really need to prove to myself that I can do it.</p>
<p>I dislike UCSB</p>
<p>^oooooh! <em>shots fired</em></p>
<p>I was a competitive gymnast till age 15, so my priority was never my education, and I never considered myself an academic scholar. After attending my first community college course during my sophomore year, however, I realized how great education could be outside of high school. I started to love learning (in the proper environment, that is). I maintained a 3.3-3.5 at my high school while simultaneously taking CC courses, and when it came time to start applying to colleges, I made the decision to save a tremendous amount of money by staying at the CC I had already felt so comfortable at. People encouraged me to apply elsewhere anyway but I decided against it, simply because I knew that if I were to get accepted, I would actually go.<br>
Currently I have conflicted feelings about my decision. Because of budget cuts, I’ve been set back an entire year due to cutting classes. My mother decided that, since fees were so much smaller than those at a university, she’d let me take all financial responsibility. And finally, I felt a strong obligation to keep my part-time job of 3 years, not only because I have the highest priority and practically make my own hours every week but also because I was having to pay for books, tuition, groceries and gas. On the other hand, I feel like all these things have also given me a lot of insight into real responsibilities and expenses and time management, which I’m almost entirely positive I would not have learned by going straight to a university on someone else’s money.
I’m just starting my second year as a college student, and I still have two more. I’m antsy as hell and Fall 2013 could not come soon enough. The most frustrating thing, I think, is that I completed my GE in one year and would have had all my major prereqs done by Spring 2012 had it not been for budget cuts. But I pay FULL TUITION. If I’m paying full price for something, I expect a fulfilling service. I feel gipped but what can you do.
Anyway, I guess we’re all in the same boat. I feel like as transfer students, we have a maturity that most people our age lack. We’re responsible, resourceful and we’re just hella awesome. :)</p>
<p>I decided to start my education with CCC because of financial reason. I came to the US when i was 16 as a high school senior, i took ACT and my points were enough for some top tier UC ( i think). But then I rethink about how my parents work hard and such to support me, i decided to go through cc first to save money. Back in my home country where all my friends are now going to university, i felt a bit of shame when told them i went to a cc instead of a " real uni " . But eventually, I realize from many relationships I had ( friendship, lineage, colleague, etc), no one will ever love me and support me like my parents and my sibling, so i stopped caring so much about what people think. </p>
<p>@UCkittychen: I know we’r all anxious because of the season is coming, but please just relax and chill. Your seriousness may come up as rudeness.</p>
<p>Pardon my english.</p>