Santa Monica College is ready to put students on course to meet the latest requirements for transfer to the University of California.
For 24 years straight, SMC has been California’s No. 1 community college in transferring students into the prestigious UC system, sending 1,061 students on their way to a UC campus in 2013-14 (the most recent available data), and far outranking the No. 2 and No. 3 UC feeder schools, which transferred 756 and 741 students, respectively.
The UC Transfer Pathways Initiative – announced by UC President Janet Napolitano July 7 – standardizes the transfer requirements for each of 10 majors (with 11 more in the works) at all nine of the UC undergraduate campuses.
The initiative does not guarantee UC admission, but each one of the majors now has a single set of courses – a “pathway” – that will prepare students for UC transfer and, once accepted, guide those students to graduation from UC within two years.
“We welcome this effort to standardize and provide essential guidance on UC admission requirements for transfer students, and we’re in the process of updating our annual catalog to reflect the latest developments,” said Dan Nannini, SMC Transfer Faculty Leader.
“The UC Transfer Pathways Initiative will make it easier for students to understand the ‘musts’ for the majors they wish to pursue. Taking the confusion out of choosing courses makes it possible for us to focus on how to better prepare our students for transfer, as well as support them in their quest for knowledge.”
The SMC Transfer/Counseling Center and a wide variety of student support programs have been helping SMC students for decades as they navigate their way through a maze of inconsistent and often confusing transfer requirements for the various UC campuses.
The UC Transfer Pathways Initiative will make it easier for counselors to help students develop an education plan that reflects their interests, spells out the courses that fulfill the UC transfer requirements, sorts out any prerequisites or corequisites required for the transfer courses, and incorporates support services students might need, such as tutoring.
As a longtime leader in providing the courses students need for transfer to UC, Santa Monica College will use the UC Transfer Pathways Initiative to plan how courses will be scheduled to help students get prepared for transfer efficiently and effectively.
The 10 majors currently covered by the UC Transfer Initiative are: anthropology, biochemistry, biology, cell biology, chemistry, economics, mathematics, molecular biology, physics, and sociology.
Santa Monica College is a California Community College accredited by the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC) of the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC).
