What I'm gathering here at SDN is that education in California is different that elsewhere in that many students are funneled into the community college system for 2 years and then permitted to transfer to a flagship state university to finish. I suppose some of the rationale for this is cost for both the student and the state budget. I guess the big question then becomes how California schools and other schools view California residents who took this route.
Then again, some people go straight to UC Berkeley, UCLA, etc and taking the first 2 years at a CC may be a way of classifying students into two groups one of which is considered the stronger academically.
UCs are required to admit certain number of California transfer students each year. That includes UC Berkeley and UCLA. It does, however, bring their reputation down because it demises the effort of Freshman admits (the Freshman admits have to have 4.0+ wGPA and rigorous ECs in order to get into UCLA or UC Berkeley; whereas transfer students just have to maintain their GPA close to 4.0). That is, until you realize that Freshman admits have the same system as well. I remember UCLA doing a dedicated LA (LAUSD, etc.) pool for their high school senior applicants. And then admit certain number of students within the LA region. Other UCs, admit California high school seniors who places in top 15% in their high school, which guarantees their admission to any one of UCs other than UCB and UCLA. So it's true that freshman admits only have to maintain high GPA like transfer students.
Your question was, how residents in California feels about this? It varies.
These are from my experience.
Students-
There might be some students at UCLA and UC Berkeley who might feel "unfair." Like here
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com...sfer-students-here-are-grossly-subpar-p1.html
But as far as I've heard, there are just a lot of students at each UC campus that students don't bother to track down other students. So not a lot of students bother to care. I've met a lot of UC students who were there for full 4 years. Most of them said they do not care and some of them praise transfer students who excel in their upper division courses.
Residents-
The residents in California are varied as well. Some of the residents feel that transfer students are sub-par. UCs have been this way for a long time and most people encourage all students to work hard whether they are freshman or transfer students. In highschool, teachers and other students encourage students to go to UC right away. In real life, people care more about the rigors between UC and privates or UC and CSU. For example, it's way harder for CSU students to get into med schools in California than transfer students at UCs. And they like to compare UCs with USC, Stanford, Cal Tech and Pomona College. You can see plenty of this from Berkeley vs Stanford and UCLA vs USC rivalry in Olympics and football. They are more occupied with this rivalry between schools rather than freshman admit vs transfer admit on each school.
Well..
Some of my friends rejected their admission offer from UCs like UCLA or UC Berkeley and went to CC- for their own personal reasons. There weren't many academic reasons why people just choose to go to CC. So it might be unfair to say that transfer students are academically less stronger- given that transfer students are able to excel in UC system as well. Either that, freshman admits only had to maintain As and Bs to earn their spot at UC- which resembles how CC students enter UC.
