SMC to hold college transfer fair today
SMC — Despite deep budget cuts and a bitter battle between faculty and administrators, students here led the state last year in transfers to California’s popular public university system, officials announced Wednesday.
A total of 900 students transferred from Santa Monica College to University of California campuses in the 2003-2004 school year, or nearly twice as many as the No. 2 campus, Diablo Valley College in the San Francisco Bay area. Another 1,121 SMC students moved on to Cal-State campuses, according to reports from the state school systems.
Dan Nannini, SMC’s transfer center coordinator, said the figures are especially impressive given that both public school systems severely curtailed transfer admissions in the winter and spring due to the tight state budget.
“If everything had stayed the same, we might have hit 1,000 transfers to UC” schools, he said. “But... the landscape changed dramatically last year.”
More than half of the University of California transfers from SMC wound up at UCLA. Another 93 went to Irvine; 91 to Berkeley; 62 each to San Diego and Santa Barbara; 26 to Riverside; 22 to Santa Cruz; and the other 15 to Davis. Most of the Cal-State transfers from SMC wound up at the Northridge campus.
SMC also led the state in transfers to UC schools by Latino and African American students, according to the reports. A total of 108 Latino SMC students went on to UC campuses last year, compared to 76 from the No. 2 school, East Los Angeles College. Thirty-one African-American SMC students went on UC schools, compared to 20 students from both West Los Angeles and Riverside colleges.
The popular community college will hold a student transfer fair this morning, with admissions officers from about 80 higher education institutions attending, including all of the UC and Cal-State campuses, as well as Columbia University and, for the first time, representatives from Cornell University and New York’s Polytechnic University.
College officials applauded SMC’s first-place ranking, which it has held for much of the last two decades.
“It definitely equates to SMC being one of the best community colleges in the state,” SMC spokesman Bruce Smith said. “At the same time, it reflects a campus-wide flavor that I think is a hallmark of ours, where we want our students to really be the best — everything from our counselors to our teachers, to everything between. We kind of have this (attitude of), ‘We’re No. 1 and we want to stay that way, and we want to increase our transfer figures and make everything better.’”
As for private schools, SMC transfers to the University of Southern California shot up by 18 percent last school year, while other SMC students moved onto prestigious campuses like Cal Tech, Yale and the University of Pennsylvania.
How the transfer numbers factor into percentages of the overall student body isn’t clear. College officials said they don’t calculate percentages because there are too many other factors to consider, like students who return after getting higher degrees for special instruction, and students who spend three or four years at SMC before transferring because they are studying part-time. One thing is certain, though: With more than 29,000 students this fall, SMC is one of the largest of community colleges in California.
Still, officials said the strong transfer numbers speak for themselves.
“It is true that SMC is one of the largest schools in enrollment, but when you look at the huge gap between how many we transfer and how many the No. 2 (school) transfers, you can see that we are the clear leader,” Smith said.
SMC President Dr. Piedad F. Robertson added the No. 2 school, Diablo Valley College, is in close proximity to several UC campuses.
SMC met a state target this fall to rebound its enrollment to levels from two years ago. As a result, SMC currently has an enrollment of 29,312, as opposed to about 25,500 students last school year, college officials said. That jump in enrollment entitles SMC to millions of dollars in additional state funds this year.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on October 21, 2004. Read the original PDF.