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| Bryce Benton |
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| Tim Phelps |
For those who want to earn a University of California (UC) degree, there is an option for entering the university beyond admission as a freshman.
"Besides direct admission as a freshman coming out of high school, students can also go through the community college system for two years and transfer to the UC system," Bryce Benton, assistant director of international admissions department at the University of California Santa Cruz, said.
The UC Santa Cruz is one of nine campuses in the UC system. It has transfer programs with all 112 California community colleges.
Community colleges in the United States generally refer to junior colleges, two-year colleges or city colleges granting associate's degrees.
Benton and Tim Phelps, coordinator of international student service department at Butte College, visited Korea last month to inform Korean students of a "transfer admission" pathway.
"It's challenging for some brilliant Korean students from difficult high schools including foreign language high schools to have a high GPA to come to UC as they might be overlooked due to their GPAs on paper," Phelps said.
"What the community college does is provide another opportunity to make that selection process very transparent. By going through the community college, students can demonstrate to the UC that they're successful college students able to handle college coursework."
They visited some special-purpose and international high schools, including Daewon and Seoul foreign language high schools and Seoul International School.
"The transfer admission concept that we understand is not as common in Korean universities. But in fact, nearly one third of all the graduates at UC started at a California community college and then transferred to UC," Benton said.
Students who want to apply directly to UC Santa Cruz have to have a minimum GPA of 3.4 while the average grade-point average for admitted freshmen applicants is 3.8. They also need TOEFL scores above 80 as basic admission requirements.
In contrast, if students apply to Butte College, they are not required to submit SAT scores and just need a TOEFL score of a minimum 45 on IBT because the college only looks at high school transcripts.
"The third-year students at a community college such as Butte College are eligible to transfer to UC Santa Cruz through the Transfer Admission Guarantee (TAG) program," Benton said.
Under the TAG program, students can receive an admission guarantee if they have above a 3.0 GPA or complete certain subjects during their two years at a community college like English, mathematics, arts, sciences and so on.
"As long as they take the courses and earn satisfactory grades and meet the conditions of the transfer admission guarantee program, we will guarantee their admission to UC Santa Cruz," Benton added.
He said the mission of public universities including UC Santa Cruz is to educate people, which he believes is a public service. "We want to give students multiple opportunities and chances and access to a great University of California education," Benton said.
"They also can save money since the Butte College tuition is $17,000 per year, lower than the $38,000 at UC. This means families can send more children to UC schools or perhaps they can continue their children's education at the UC master's level," Phelps added.
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