Transferring from Community College to University: Balancing Course Load

[Illuvitar]

Well from what I understand when a student transfers from community college to a university they start with a fresh GPA. Its kind of worrying me that by the time I transfer I will have all of my general eds out of the way and will have only engineering courses every semester till graduation. I am just worried that this will ruin my chances of getting a job if my gpa is trashed by senior year.

I would prefer to balance my course load like a normal student and take two or three hard classes with two easy humanities classes but it doesn't look like I will be able to. My question is should I wait to take english, government and speech until I get to the university and focus exclusively on mastering science and math courses in CC or should I take the standard route and take all my general eds at CC and the engineering courses my degree will require at the university. I guess this might seem like a silly question but I would like to hear what other transfer students experiences were like. Thanks.

 

[Forensics]

Oh man, don't worry. I don't know how it is at your college but maybe you can use a semester to break into things by taking interesting classes that are related to your major?

My advice to you is to knock out as many general ed classes as you can now. It wouldn't hurt to take some classes that you feel are weak areas for you but I would make the focus of your CC time to knock out all the gen ed classes you can.

I'm using my time at CC to knock out all my chem, phy, and math classes even though it will take me an extra year to do it. The classes are much cheaper this way.

 

[heatengine516]

Definitely get your general ed crap done at CC. You don't want to be enrolled in 3 junior level engineering classes and then also have to worry about writing a 5 page english paper or preparing a speech on top of all those engineering classes.

The goal here is to get all the general stuff out of the way so that by junior year you can focus only on the classes pertaining to your major. Theoretically, you should be able to do better in all the tougher classes if you have more time to devote to them, and you are more interested in them because this is your major area.

It also may be the case that you will have more core classes to fulfill based on your university's requirements for the major. In my situation as a physics major, the university I'm transferring to has general core requirements specific to the college of science, which are beyond the general ed requirements. In my case it's a programming class, a technical writing class, and another biology class. I've managed to get them all done at CC though. I would take a look at the student handbook of whatever university you are transferring to and see what their actual requirements for the major are.

 

[lisab]

Your college GPA includes all the colleges you've attended. You'll have to compute it yourself but you're an engineering major, I'm sure you can figure it out .

So when when the time comes to apply for jobs or grad school, you report your cummulative GPA, which will include all your gen ed classes.

 

[Illuvitar]

Oh man, don't worry. I don't know how it is at your college but maybe you can use a semester to break into things by taking interesting classes that are related to your major?

My advice to you is to knock out as many general ed classes as you can now. It wouldn't hurt to take some classes that you feel are weak areas for you but I would make the focus of your CC time to knock out all the gen ed classes you can.

I'm using my time at CC to knock out all my chem, phy, and math classes even though it will take me an extra year to do it. The classes are much cheaper this way.

For the moment I cannot take any engineering courses (except programming for engineers but that doesn't transfer any of the three universities I am considering transferring to) but I really enjoy the stem courses I am taking this semester, I honestly can't stand how long it takes to write papers when I could be studying math! Thats what I am planning on doing too, I want to get Calc 1-3 and physics out of the way before transferring.

Definitely get your general ed crap done at CC. You don't want to be enrolled in 3 junior level engineering classes and then also have to worry about writing a 5 page english paper or preparing a speech on top of all those engineering classes.

The goal here is to get all the general stuff out of the way so that by junior year you can focus only on the classes pertaining to your major. Theoretically, you should be able to do better in all the tougher classes if you have more time to devote to them, and you are more interested in them because this is your major area.

It also may be the case that you will have more core classes to fulfill based on your university's requirements for the major. In my situation as a physics major, the university I'm transferring to has general core requirements specific to the college of science, which are beyond the general ed requirements. In my case it's a programming class, a technical writing class, and another biology class. I've managed to get them all done at CC though. I would take a look at the student handbook of whatever university you are transferring to and see what their actual requirements for the major are.

This is very true. Humanities classes arent hard necessarily but they are just so time intensive it stresses me out. I really hope I will have developed the tools to do well in engineering courses but I am just worried that taking five engineering courses a semester in junior and senior year will make my gpa a 1.0 but Ill just have to wait and see. Yeah that is my case as well. There are several Intro to programming and CS and Statics/Dynamics classes that transferable to my university of interest (UTD), I am looking forward to those but they have prerequisites that I haven't taken yet. But youre right it probably will be smarter to get gen eds out of the way now, Ill worry about my GPA when I get there.

 

[Illuvitar]

Your college GPA includes all the colleges you've attended. You'll have to compute it yourself but you're an engineering major, I'm sure you can figure it out .

So when when the time comes to apply for jobs or grad school, you report your cummulative GPA, which will include all your gen ed classes.

Oh I didn't know this. Well that's good news I was under the mistaken impression that the gpa from the university you graduate from is the only one that counts so I am glad to hear it.