Records recieved late

IGETC, other information arriving to transfer schools after deadlines

Transferring from a community college to a four-year university is a team effort. It requires participation from many people with no room for error.

When one person does not do their job, the whole process falls apart and the students ultimately suffer by possibly having their admission rescinded.

Scott Prewitt, former Pierce College geography major, applied to graduate and transfer from Pierce to the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) this past February.

It was not until late August that Prewitt received an email from UCSB saying that he only had a week to submit his approval of IGETC petition.

Prewitt became worried and tried to contact the graduation office at Pierce to see what the issue was, but he was later informed that the graduation office was going to be closed for a few weeks.

Prewitt took to social media where he stated that one member of the UCSB office of admissions went as far as to call Pierce College “notorious” for missing paperwork deadlines.

“The UCSB administration office said that they had a lot of problems with Pierce and when I asked if they were notorious for this kind of stuff she said yeah,” Prewitt said.

However, in a phone interview with the UCSB admissions office, they said they have no knowledge of these claims of Pierce being “notorious” for late paperwork. They went on to say that it is very rare that they reject students’ admission because of late paperwork and that they do whatever they can to help the student.

“Every year there is some,” said a member of UCSB admissions who requested to stay anonymous.

“That’s part of the process now that school is starting and they are missing documents. Very rarely we do that and we try to work with the students as much as possible.”

Prewitt does not want to point fingers at anyone but feels like the process is flawed and has too much room for error.

“Somebody is accountable for the delays which are being called notorious,” Prewitt said. “And that somebody should be explaining why those delays are occurring and why they are specific to Pierce College.”

According to Prewitt, Will Marmolejo, dean of student services, was the individual who helped resolve the whole situation.

Marmolejo said that the process itself is not difficult, but because there are so many factors involved in the transfer process there is plenty of room for error.

“It is not a complicated process but it is a process with a lot of moving parts,” Marmolejo said.

“Grades, where instructors don’t submit grades on time. Students change their mind when they want to get their IGETC to one school then to a different school so they let a counselor know but they don’t let the graduation office know.”

Marmolejo also cleared up that most colleges will give a deadline to submit their transfer records, but will almost always accept it after the deadline. According to Marmolejo, these deadlines are meant to light a fire and motivate the student to be proactive in the transfer process.

“I know that a lot of times these dates are not set in stone and the student is not going to lose their certification for their IGETC,” Marmolejo said. “They aren’t going to lose their acceptance.”

According to Marmolejo, this problem can be resolved by hiring more evaluators in the graduation office.

The state of California is paying colleges more money depending on the number of students they graduate, said Marmolejo. With graduation in higher demand, the evaluators in the graduation office start to get overwhelmed.

“We are working on trying to get an additional one or two evaluators,” said Marmolejo. “We have three evaluators. Schools of our size in our district have five evaluators.”

Marmolejo advises students if they are experiencing a problem with their transferring process to go visit the graduation office since they are the ones with all the records and petitions. He also said that students should check their LACCD email and student portal regularly.

“If ultimately, that is not productive then they can contact the Dean of Student Services, which is me,” Marmolejo said.