Thirty-seven students huddled into a bus at Pierce College to participate in a college tour, focused on coastal campuses in Southern California on March 10.
The tour visited California State University Channel Islands, California Lutheran University and University of California Santa Barbara.
Arranged by the Pierce College Transfer Center, the tour gave insight to students who want to transfer to universities. The tour was completely free of charge with meals and snacks provided.
Three Pierce College transfer mentors, Akadina Amrekhasadeh, Rosa Medrano and Nicole Goddard, guided and assisted students during the tour. The mentors answered questions regarding transfer requirements, application deadlines, scholarships and tuition.
The first stop of the tour was California State University Channel Islands. Students got to explore various areas of the campus, such as the library, cafeteria, bookstore and the buildings where classes were held.
Amy Wallace, CSU Channel Islands dean of the library, answered questions and gave information about the services that were offered at the university library.
“One thing unique about our library is that we are open 24 hours a day on the week of finals,” Wallace said.
“The other big thing that we do is check out any sort of equipment for classes, such as digital cameras, video/audio recorders, laptops and a lot of different media. Our collection is mostly electronic because it’s a newer library and we have one of the best collections in the CSU system because of the small area,” Wallace said.
The next stop of the tour was California Lutheran University, a private university located in Thousand Oaks. Students were divided into six groups and toured the school with the guidance of student tour guides.
Linh Nguyen, Transfer Admissions Counselor at California Lutheran, gave information about various topics like living on campus, acceptance rates, transfer requirements, majors offered, student to faculty ratio and the activities held on campus.
Nguyen emphasized that Cal Lutheran matched scholarships offered by other schools.
“We match the same scholarship amount awarded by a UC school if a student has been accepted by one,” Nguyen said. “For example, if a student gets accepted by University of California Los Angeles, and is offered a scholarship of $20,000, we would match the same amount.”
Nguyen also gave information on the application students need to fill out.
“We are a Common Application exclusive university. Meaning that the only way [students] can submit their application is online,” Nguyen said. “With the Common Application, we do ask for a personal statement and two questions. Why you want to transfer to California Lutheran and what you want to study. In addition to your application, we do require one letter of recommendation.”
The final stop of the tour was the University of California Santa Barbara. Students attended a meeting and watched a slideshow introducing the school and went on tours guided by student tour guide.
Marisa Flores, Transfer Admissions Counselor at UCSB, was at the meeting introducing the school and gave information about the majors offered and what students needed to do in order to get accepted.
“I love that students come here to visit,” said Flores. “It’s definitely one of that campuses that you need to drive out here and see. You actually have to feel the energy of it and the peacefulness and get that feel that it’s a homely type of environment.”
Andre Tabnak, 30, nursing major at Pierce, thought the school should be hosting more tours like the Coastal College Tour from now on.
“It was very informative, exciting, interesting and motivating for me to bring up my GPA,” Tabnak said. “The food, the ride, it was all awesome. There was nothing bad about it and the mentors really went above and beyond to help students. It was really well organized.”
