When finishing takes years longer than expected

Meet Shay

San Diego City College | San Diego State University

Shay transferred from San Diego City College to San Diego State University while balancing school, work, and parenting. She walked across the graduation stage, but years later, a degree requirement still stands between her and the credential she's worked so hard to earn.

Transcript

What happens when students transfer from community college to a four-year college or university? What counts, what doesn’t, and what do they wish they’d known?

Through firsthand accounts, students share the decisions, setbacks, and support that shaped their experiences, revealing what’s at stake when credits do, and don’t, move with them.

Shay thought she’d done everything she needed to earn her degree.

Years later, she’s still fighting for it.

Shay

The moment that I realized that my credits weren’t going to count in, what really, really crushed me is when they told me that the language requirement, I didn’t meet it. And I’m just like, “Wait, hold on. I took both of those at City College.”

And they were just like, “No, one of them doesn’t count because you’re already transferring over too many credits.”

And I’m just like, “I don’t care how many credits I’m transferring over, I need for this language to count.”

And it didn’t. And that part really, really hurts because it’s still affecting me to this day. Before I transferred, I thought that San Diego State was going to be just like San Diego City College, just because they’re in the same place.

I felt like I was doing things over and over and over again.

We should be warned about that. Like they should tell us the requirements. Because it felt like I was doing things over and over and over again, and I’m just like, this feels like everything is just over and over again. And that mentally can feel like it’s breaking you because I’m just like, I just did this.

I’ve already graduated. I walked across the stage, I took those pictures. I took my graduation pictures. I’ve done all that. But I’m still at a standstill because of stuff that didn’t transfer over and because we don’t really know what to do. So a lot of times when I was sitting there, I’m like, I could have sworn when I was sitting there she said that this was going to transfer over. Oh no, it didn’t transfer over.

This is crazy. I could have took this at the City College level, and it would have been way cheaper. I want them to understand and put themselves in our shoes, especially nontraditional student shoes. This is already not easy. Not just the fact that we’re parents, it’s not just school or work, it’s everything. So in some ways, I think that they should have different pathways for nontraditional students. We haven’t been granted that we can just focus on school.

We can’t, we can’t.

And so a lot of times, things do slip through the cracks, but it’s not our fault. And I just feel they should be more lenient towards that and try to figure out different ways to work with nontraditional students. We completely understand that we have just come from the community college level, and we have thought that we have hit every point in every pathway, that we have done everything that we need to do to get to their institution. And I think that what they need to know and understand is sometimes stuff does fall through the cracks, but that’s not our fault. I think that everybody should know and come in and say, hey, it’s our fault together and work together to fix that.

Students did the work. Why doesn’t it count?