Berkeleyan

‘Re-directed’ freshmen now Berkeley-bound

18 August 2004

Approximately 270 high-school graduates who had planned to spend two years at a community college before transferring to UC Berkeley as juniors received congratulatory messages earlier this month offering them admission here as freshmen. These students, all of whom signed up for the campus’s Guaranteed Transfer Option program last June, now have the option of enrolling here during the spring semester, which begins in January.

The offer followed agreement by the state Legislature and the governor to restore funding so that all UC-eligible high-school graduates who applied for admission can be accommodated at a UC campus as freshmen.

“This is just terrific news for the students, their parents, and the state,” said Chancellor Robert Berdahl. “These students spent their high-school years successfully completing the required coursework and doing all that was asked of them to distinguish themselves and make themselves eligible for admission to the UC system as freshmen. Thanks to the Legislature, UC can now uphold its admission promise.”

State budget constraints had initially forced UC to reduce enrollment by denying freshman admission to 7,600 UC-eligible students, instead guaranteeing them admission to a specific UC campus after successful completion of two years at a community college. Under the recently approved state budget package, campuses across the UC system can now offer these students freshman admission. Students offered the guaranteed transfer program earlier this summer will be offered freshman admission at a campus in the UC system — though not necessarily their preferred campus — whether or not they signed up to participate in the transfer program in June.

Unfortunately, says Richard Black, assistant vice chancellor for admissions and enrollment, UC Berkeley cannot accommodate those students who had declined to participate in its transfer program earlier this summer; they will be offered admission to another UC campus. Berkeley will, however, accommodate about 270 students who returned signed statements of participation for the Berkeley transfer program earlier this summer; those students will be offered admission to the spring semester. They have until Friday, August 20, to decide whether they want to enroll as spring semester freshmen or remain in the guaranteed transfer program and complete two years of coursework at a community college before enrolling at UC Berkeley.

The freshman admission offer, as with all offers of admission, is provisional until the campus reviews the students’ high-school transcripts and verifies senior year grades and test scores to ensure that students met UC-eligibility requirements. Further, students who choose to accept Berkeley’s spring freshman admission offer must enroll in a community college this fall and take at least 12 semester units of UC-transferable courses, including a mathematics course and an English course. They must maintain at least a “C” average.

It is unclear how many of the 270 students will accept the spring semester freshman admission offer, but campus officials expect that the vast majority of students will do so.