If you graduated from a CSU & now want to go to a UC for a different major, do your GE units transfer?

Question

How does it all work?

Answer 1

Admission for "second baccalaureate" is fairly difficult at the UCs and is limited to certain schools/colleges or majors. From what I can remember at Berkeley (I knew someone who was doing a second baccalaureate), I believe you have to take all the GE courses (so you are literally getting a brand new degree). But individual UC campuses may have different policies regarding the second baccalaureate, so you should check with the campuses you are interested in applying.

Answer 2

The general rule is that you won't be asked to take exactly the same courses again. Therefore, to the degree that the two schools have the same GE requirements, you won't have to retake courses you have already taken, especially if they were taken recently. However, if the requirements are different (and they probably are for the two different systems), you would have to take the required courses that you had not yet taken. The IGETC courses are supposed to cover for both systems.

What I can't find is any reference on the UCs websites as to how they handle that, because there are two possibilities. One is that you get the second degree if you have completed all the remaining courses for the degree, without having to take anything else to replace the units you are not being asked to complete. In other words, your GE requirements would count toward the required number of credits for both degrees.

The second is that you would not have to repeat any courses, but you would have to take other courses instead, because the school will not give a degree based on fewer than the required number of units. For example, let's say your first degree was 120 credits, of which 45 were GE. Those 45 units transfer to the second degree in addition to being counted for the first one, so your second degree would only be 75 units. Some schools won't find that acceptable, and will make you take an additional 45 ceredits of electives or something to make up the difference, so that your two degrees required 240 units, not just 195.