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# Going from college to the next college
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/going-from-college-to-the-next-college/
- Published: 2007-05-24T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-24T00:49:17.000Z
- Author: Melody Hanatani
- Tags: Education, Santa Monica, #archive-import

*Students have transfer options*

CITYWIDE With a stack of college acceptance and rejection letters sitting at home, Santa Monica College student Alexander Koblansky was faced with a predicament.

Choosing between five fine institutions of higher learning — UC Berkeley, UCLA, USC, UC Santa Barbara and NYU — might be a good problem to have, but it’s a stress-inducing dilemma all the same.

High school seniors and college transfer hopefuls across the country are currently receiving the last batch of admissions letters, eagerly anticipating the arrival of the large envelope containing a congratulatory note along with enrollment information, or dreading the smaller envelope with the accompanying “we regret to inform you.”

The long-awaited missives have been rolling in since February, starting with the public colleges, and now slowly phasing out with the last-minute letters from the private universities.

The private schools typically use transfer students to fill the number of spots they couldn’t fill with the freshman class, said Dan Nannini, transfer center coordinator at SMC. Some schools, like USC, have target numbers for transfer students.

At this point, many students are in the midst of making the difficult decision of which letter to respond with a “yes.”

Nannini recalls a conversation he recently had with a student who was stressing about whether she should enroll in UC Davis or UC Berkeley, a small town environment or a university with a worldwide reputation.

Santa Monica College is known as being one of the largest feeders of transfer students into the University of California and California State University.

This year alone, the University of California and its 10 schools offered admission to more than 57,000 high school seniors in the state. Data for transfer students is not yet available.

Last year, 940 SMC students transferred to the University of California schools and 2,000 are now attending the California State University. About 180 SMC students transferred to USC last fall.

Counselors at the Transfer Center at Santa Monica College assist students on choosing between different schools, weighing the pros and cons of a quarter school versus the semester system, of moving away as opposed to staying close to home, and of attending a school in a big city as opposed to one with small town charm.

Some students will also take financial aid offers into consideration, said Nannini, who recalled a student turning down acceptance letters from UCLA and Berkeley to take a full ride scholarship at UC Irvine instead.

“That’s pretty attractive to some students,” Nannini said. With nearly a perfect grade point average, honors student Koblansky has decided to attend Berkeley next year, mainly because of the caliber of its business administration program.

The only schools that rejected Koblansky were UC Riverside and the University of Pennsylvania.

A native of the Ukraine, Koblansky moved to the United States in 2005 after attending National University in his home country. The 19-year-old selected Santa Monica College based on its reputation as being a good feeder school.

He recalls an intimidating application process and the difficulty of compressing his entire life into a 1,000-word essay.

“Last November was the most busy and most nervous month of my life,” he said.

When the responses started rolling in, Koblansky became anxious, continually checking his personal profile on the University of California Web site and calling the schools to see if a decision had been made about his admission, specifically to Berkeley, his first choice.

Then one day, he clicked on his account to check his status for Berkeley and saw the word “congratulations.”

“Everything else didn’t matter (all of a sudden),” Koblansky said. “I was happy and relieved, finally. The years of hard work paid off.”

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on May 24, 2007.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/052407.pdf?ref=smdp.com)