An innovative new transfer program for high school seniors is sitting in limbo because of state budget cuts to California’s state community colleges earlier this year.

The Dual Admissions Program, as it is called, is designed to help California high school seniors who are good students, but for whatever reasons, did not quite meet all the requirements necessary to transfer to one of California’s ultra-competitive UC campuses.

Under the program, a student would enter into a contract with a California community college, and a UC school of his/her choosing.

Beginning as a freshman, that student would attend the community college for two years, meet the requirements of the program, then automatically go straight to the UC school as a junior.

Before being put on hold, the program was slated to become operational in Fall 2003.

Because of a last minute windfall of funds last spring, however, community colleges in what is known as region eight, have begun the program on a pilot basis exclusively with UC Irvine.

Region eight consists of schools in Orange County, Long Beach and Cerritos.

Last spring, Cerritos College went to the local high schools and recruited students for the program.

According to Dr. Jan Connal, director of the Transfer Center, there are currently five students under consideration for the program.

She said, students must apply for the program just as if they were applying directly to UCI.

If they didn’t meet eligibility to apply to the UC system as freshmen after graduating from high school, they can apply to UCI and Cerritos, or UCI and any other community college in the region eight area.

If the program becomes officially operational, however, students will be able to apply to any UC school and community college in the state.

The criteria for consideration for the program are:

o The student must meet at least nine of the 11 A-G high school general education requirements with a minimum GPA of 2.8.

o The student must be in the top 4 – 12 percent of his/her graduating class.

One less thing a student entering the Dual Admissions Program has to worry about is SAT scores. By going to a community college before the UC school, the student bypasses the SATs.

Once admitted to the program, students will get the benefits of extra counseling, both at UCI and Cerritos; and extra attention from UCI with things like monitoring of his/her progress, and being allowed to take part in programs at UCI.

“The student will be treated as if he/she were a UCI student,” Connal said. When the student enters this program, he/she is “part Cerritos student, and part UCI student.”

Carol Patrick, administrative dean of counseling explained, the basis of funding was that there was just a little bit of money left over from matriculation that was unspent state- wide, so the chancellor’s office decided to take that amount of money and split it evenly with all 10 regions in the state of California, and let the colleges do what they want with the money.

According to Patrick, each college in the region received $4552.00.

Connal said, “Since this is a pilot program, we’re going to learn the ins and outs of how to actually operate the program.”

With only five students in the pilot program, the current money available for it is sufficient, however, if the program is not implemented state-wide, Connal said it will be kind of difficult to continue it, not knowing if or where the funding will come from.