When the plan doesn’t go as planned
Meet Adam
San Joaquin Delta College | University of the Pacific
Adam Acosta transferred from San Joaquin Delta College to the University of the Pacific with a carefully considered plan: graduate on time and without debt. As a first-generation college student, he'd thought through his choices carefully, but an unexpected requirement left him questioning whether his plan was still possible.
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.
Adam had a plan. Graduate on time. Graduate without debt.
Adam
Because of my financial background, like being more low income, I don’t want to take on student loans. At one point, I had a discussion with someone, one of the heads at my high school. And he was sort of talking about like, “Oh, here are different forms of money in college. Here’s scholarships, here’s grants, here’s financial aid, all the different stuff.” But the big one, the big one for me was loans. And I think the thing that completely sounded an alarm bell in my head: “I don’t want student loans ever in my life.”
I thought like everything was just going to be pretty straightforward. The big reveal after getting into the university, after having everything basically set up where I was like, ‘Oh, I have to take these classes again, despite already doing them.’ They were just pretty much just not transferred at all. If I want to fulfill my requirements, I have to essentially take those classes again.
It’s like getting thrown to the wolves over here.
Trying to reach anybody regarding it was pretty difficult. I couldn’t really get in touch with anybody. Early on, it was just like, you know, getting thrown to the wolves over here. I felt like I was kind of on my own. It was just a lot of steps. A lot of steps I simply didn’t anticipate. I guess that’s the one thing I could definitely say, or I wish I knew a point of contact as a transfer student. Once you’re in, it’s like, it’s sort of really hard to navigate when you don’t know who to go to to navigate these systems. I guess what could have made the difference is that maybe, at Delta, what I could have done is maybe taken a course that still filled or fulfilled the same requirement of those classes that didn’t transfer. Like take classes that would actually transfer but would still fulfill my general requirements. That way, when I do go to the University of the Pacific, instead of it being a class I have to retake, it’s something that’s actually new.
If you’re not in the know, your knowledge gaps are going to show. Delta College was easy to navigate, but this—this is a completely different thing. For people who are barely getting straight out of high school, it’s like, it’s got to be intimidating, to be honest. It’s very, very, very intense. Very intense.
I’m hoping, I’m really hoping, that it doesn’t extend beyond two years because I want to get my bachelor’s by May of 2028. But I guess that also kind of concerns me because I’m just like, how is this going to affect my tuition costs? That’s sort of like—that’s about time and just tuition in general. I really don’t want to be in debt. Yeah, I’d also, like, I would do anything to make sure I graduate on time. But when it comes to if that’s even in my hands, I’m not fully sure.
Students did the work. Why doesn’t it count?
