UCI Beckons to JC Transfer Students

If UC Irvine had a Statue of Liberty, she would be saying something like this these days:

Give me your community college transfers,

Your upperclassmen ,

Your students longing to go to UCI .

I lift my lamp beside the golden door, with 300 transfer slots available.

In lieu of a Statue of Liberty, UCI officials this week sent out news releases and other more mundane messages urging Orange County community college students to apply for fall admission.

Officials said while freshman enrollment at UCI closed last November, openings for sophomores and upperclassmen are still available. UCI said it hopes that most of the applicants will be from local community colleges.

“We’re still able to take about 300 transfer students,” UCI Admission Director James E. Dunning said. “The university has made a commitment to try to take as many community college transfers as we can next year, and that’s one reason that freshman enrollment was limited.”

Dunning said UCI will admit 2,350 freshmen next fall, compared to 2,850 in the fall of 1986. The move to limit freshmen is part of the UC’s response to state pressure to admit more community college transfers.

But UCI officials said many Orange County residents think all slots are full.

“People read about the freshmen enrollment ending as of November, and they mistakenly think everything is closed,” Dunning said. “As it is, we can still take the transfer students, and we’ll probably be accepting transfer-student applications right up to September.”

He said that to apply for UCI, a community college student must have completed at least 12 transferable credits.

Just two academic majors at UCI have no openings next fall, even for transfer students, Dunning said. They are computer science and engineering, which almost always fill early each school year.

Dunning, who has frequently praised the quality of Orange County’s eight community colleges, said he hopes their students will soon fill the 300 slots.

“The community colleges in the county are excellent, absolutely,” he said. “They’re real treasures.”