Valley offering aid to students applying to a UC school

The Career/Transfer Center is offering a workshop for students who need tips on filling out their UC application.

By Gabriel Arizon, Co-Editor-in-Chief

The Valley College Career/Transfer Center is holding UC Application workshops and UC Personal Insight workshops to help students interested in transferring to UC schools.

The CTC is offering free workshops for students who want guidance filling out their application for UC schools. The workshop guides students through the admission process, informs them on the courses they need to complete and the do’s and don’ts of filling out their application.

“The workshop gives students clarity on how to submit an application,” Career Guidance Counseling Assistant Maria Zaman said, “because it’s overwhelming at times, because there’s a lot of components that have to go into the UC application, so we try our best to break it down.”

The workshop covers the courses students need to complete by the end of the spring term to fall enrollment. This includes two transferable courses in English composition, one transferable course in mathematical concepts and quantitative reasoning and four transferable courses from at least two out of three subject areas: arts and humanities, social and behavioral sciences and physical and biological sciences. By the time students transfer, they must have completed 60 UC transferable units.

Students need a minimum 2.4 GPA to apply, but a GPA of at least 3.2 is needed to be considered competitive. For impacted majors, ones that have a small number of seats available but a large number of applicants, a 3.6 GPA or higher is recommended.

Students do not need to include a transcript with their application, but it is needed after they are admitted to and enrolled in a UC school. Transcripts for both high school and college are required and must show all grades. No interviews are conducted and no letters of recommendation are read with the application.

“[The workshop] was really helpful. It kind of reassured you of all the steps you need to take to submit your application successfully,” psychology major Elen Kirakosyan said. “I think a lot of people need to be in the know of how these applications happen to increase their chances of [being] admitted.”

The CTC is also offering workshops for students who need help writing their personal insight responses. These responses tell the school more about the student and their life experience. Students must write four responses that each have a 350-word limit. The free workshops are one-on-one with an instructor, who will give tips and advice. There are approximately 25 spots in each session, which can be reserved by contacting the CTC.

“Personal insight seems really daunting sometimes, but we always encourage students to get it started and get some feedback,” said Zaman. “Feedback is the most important thing.”

The CTC is holding one more UC Application workshop on Oct. 30 in the Student Services Annex from 3 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. There will be three more Personal Insight workshops, also in the Student Services Annex, on Oct. 29 from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m., on Nov. 7 from 5 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. and on Nov. 15 from 1:30 p.m. to 3 p.m. To contact the CTC, you can call (818) 947-2646 or email them at careertransfercenter@lavc.edu.

The deadline to submit a UC application for the fall is Nov. 30.