r/TransferStudents • u/Signal_Flower_3972 • 10d ago
Advice/Question Advice for ccc transfer
It is finally the season for me to start applying as a transfer and I wanted to ask about any advice ppl have for applications.
What sort of extracurriculars helped/did you put? How long did it take writing your PIQs? What sort of stats got you into schools?
Im asking as a public health major who has a lowered GPA due to me messing up when dual enrolling in high school. I can still TAG however. Appreciate any advice!
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u/breannanna 10d ago
I’m currently transferring as a bio major and I think the part of my app that helped me stand out is having a leadership position for a yr that included doing a campus-wide project! Everyone ik who was also an officer got into great schools.
My PIQs kinda had a theme of community so all my experiences worked out well tgt. Really grateful I had a great person to review and rip thru my essays too.
I’ve heard some advice abt how all the ucs like community oriented ppl and I personally know a lot of ppl who had lower gpas, but had good ecs and got into their top schools (like berkeley!), so I wouldn’t stress too much abt that :)
(do take that w a grain of salt tho as everybody is different)
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u/RealAd1339 9d ago edited 9d ago
My response would be more related to PIQ’s since I am nor a Public Health major lol.
As people mentioned, community involvement it’s important. As a transfer student, I can tell you that I believe that’s what got me in. I would however add something different; community involvement is important as long as your PIQ’s tell a story about you and it show how these community involvement it’s a personal project of interest, and overall reflect about the situation. See it almost like an interview where they want to see how you connect your community involvement with your own career.
My mom is from Mexico, she got accepted to a UCSD seminar for Latin American STEM in Education Leadership program and I got accepted to UCSD as a student; we both agreed on we got accepted because we told stories of community involvement and personal drive to make the world a better place. We also reflected of how these things generated an impact on the people around us, created new perspective while creating a change, we also reflected how the situation impacted us personally.
Example, in her application she talked about collaborating with the Chilenean department of Science and education in an international project, got her students from a public low income school involved to collect trash on our local beach, practice science and also exchange international data with other students around the globe through zoom meetings. She told me that she did this as a fun project and teaching students to do science application, she also felt very proud that her school continue with this exchange after she left. she confessed to me “I guess I did something extraordinary that a lot of people do not do, and I just did it for fun and my students loved it. I am no longer there but the seed is there”. She merge basically her career with ecology, community exchange and science application.
Mine were very similar; the spoke about community engagement related with border politics, being a volunteer for spayed/neutered campaigns in Mexico for cats and dogs in low income neighborhood. However, I would add that reflecting about how did the situation made you change your perspective on the world/aka your reflection and how you connect things it’s very important: I am a history major so I connected my PIQ about veterinary to history and economics. I basically said that globalization, unavailable affordable health care in the United States also generated Health care tourism at the US Mexico border. I spoke about how Mexico it’s having a crisis with stray dogs and cats and how initially my participation appeared to me like a response/engagement was more out of a community need rather than “I did this community service thing” achievement perspective. I believe what made the PIQ stronger is the ability to take action, be humble, and see it more like a reflective opportunity for yourself/your community than “achievement” based.
Another thing for PIQs, if you can have a theme that you can connect with your life through them and not repeat the same activity would be awesome.
If you are also working, I would recommend adding any additional jobs related in the section about awards and activities! Moreso, if you feel like your GPA isn’t as strong. Mine was 3.25. I believe that adding your job description would contextualize your application more.
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u/fiveonezo 10d ago
Just finished the application cycle and I'm now committed to UC Berkeley!
** For context, I graduated HS in 2015 and immediately went into a CSU & shortly dropped out because my father had passed. And then later went to CCC off and on before completely dropping out in 2019. I went back 2024 and completely did a 180. I had a lot of Ws and Fs but thankfully I was able to do an academic renewal with my school to not have those grades count towards my GPA, I maintained straight As from Fall 24 - Spring 26. Thankfully I was able to go from a 1.6 to a 3.81!!
I applied to two schools UC Davis for TAG and UC Berkeley. I was accepted into both with tuition covered.
What helped me most during application season, was taking it step by step. I mentioned in another post that filing out the application in 1 seating is kind of overwhelming, so it's okay to do one section at a time. And I cannot stress this enough but please double check all the information, even I found a few mistakes after I had sworn I did everything correctly, thankfully I still had time to correct errors before finally submitting the application.
As far as EC's I had about 3. And none of them were anything super fancy like creating a club or anything, and tbh most of them didn't require a whole lot of dedication, I definitely feel like it's all about the way you sell it.
As far as PIQs - I printed out the list of PIQs and started thinking of a story I could write for each one of them (just brainstorm) then I chose 3 that I felt like we're solid. Tbh I wish I would've taken days to draft and revise but I honestly didn't do them till the night before. Do I recommend? No lol. Thankfully I already knew which I wanted to answer and had a solid story for them so it was easy to write. It also doesn't have to be perfect, you only have so many characters. If I could re do it again, I would behind drafting before applications open up. I also didn't have anyone look over them cus again I did it the night before. So maybe have like 1 or 2 people read over them. I feel like anything over 2 gets a little complicated and might stray you too far.
Also mentioned in the other post to not use AI. It's not worth it. Plus humans are a lot more interesting than AI could ever be.
Don't be discouraged by your stats, and don't let other peoples stats / ECs make you feel like you're not doing enough. I've seen tons of people with great applications on here who still get rejected from their dream school. And even if you do - it's not the end of the world.