Out of high school, junior Victoria Chan wanted to go to USC. But when she didn’t get in, she knew she wanted to transfer. Two years, and two colleges later, Chen, who is majoring in neuroscience and is on the pre-health track, attends lectures and labs remotely from her home 20 minutes away from USC’s University Park Campus.
Upon graduating high school in 2018, Chan attended her first year of college at the University of California, Riverside, where she said she felt very isolated due to the school’s location. After her first year, she said UCR wasn’t the right fit, so she transferred to Pasadena Community College, where she was able to finish up her general education requirements before attending USC this fall. Community colleges are widely known as commuter schools: Because there isn’t campus housing like in four-year colleges, students would come to campus solely to attend classes.
“It was like high school,” Chan said. “I go to class, I go to the library, I go home. It was pretty lonely, but what can I say? It’s community college. But I’m thankful for the time that I had there that led me to USC.”
Though unconventional, Chan’s story is similar to the 1,447 undergraduate transfer students who matriculated this fall. Even amid the coronavirus pandemic, when classes would be taught online and access to campus and its facilities have been restricted, USC saw a slight increase in new transfers this fall of more than 50 students compared to Fall 2019. (The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center recently published a study titled “The COVID-19 Transfer, Mobility, and Progress Report,” which found that even amid the pandemic, there was a 2.6% increase of transfers from community colleges to four-year universities. Transfer enrolment altogether fell 4.7% compared to last fall.)
For Chan, even though classes are remote, she’s happy she decided to come to USC.
“I just think that the people at USC are more, like, driven in a way, which is what drew me to USC in the first place,” she said.
On the other hand, Chan said adapting socially has been difficult in the remote setting.
“It’s pretty much impossible to make news friends through Zoom,” she said. “Like you can’t just private message them and say, ‘Hey, what’s up?’ It’s just kind of awkward. … Knowing nobody in a class is really hard. Even though I have GroupMe and stuff, I can’t DM someone that I know because I don’t know anyone, so I definitely have to fend for myself more often, which is OK, but it’s not ideal.”
Though she’s more than halfway done with her undergraduate career, Chan said she feels playing catch up to her peers. While other juniors have established themselves in research labs and club executive board positions, Chan herself hasn’t even stepped foot on campus as a USC student. One way she has taken to ameliorate this was by joining the Daily Trojan as a copy editor.
“I definitely have found a sense of belonging at DT even though I’m only playing a small role,” she said. “It feels really good to be a part of something, which is something I never felt at PCC or UCR. It really means a lot as a transfer student who switched from school to school … it really means a lot to find a community at DT. … I feel like joining DT was good for me because I feel more like I belong at USC now.”
Sophomore Valerie Wu, who transferred from the University of California, Santa Barbara this fall, has experienced a similar transfer experience. At UCSB, Wu had her eye on transferring to USC — she spent most of her time in her dorm room studying instead of joining any extracurriculars. So, when she started classes at USC, she knew she wanted to join student organizations. Key to her transition to USC was joining the Daily Trojan, where she held several positions this fall, such as assistant opinion editor and arts & entertainment columnist.
“I will say that Daily Trojan has been really helpful for me in finding that community just because it made me get out and chat with people on Slack and get to know some people,” said Wu, who is majoring in narrative studies and law, history and culture.
However, she noticed a barrier to entry for other student organizations, which she didn’t expect given the virtual setting.
“One obstacle I ran into was just getting denied from clubs,” she said. “When I came to USC, I kind of thought that there would be no barrier to getting involved. And then getting denied from clubs that I wrote about in my transfer application — that kind of thing was disheartening for me because it was like, ‘Oh, wait, another thing that I can’t live out.’”
Another student organization designated for this community at USC is the Transfer Student Community. Chen said that, though she isn’t an actual member or hasn’t attended any meetings, the email newsletter has been useful.
“They send things about how you can get involved as transfers and fellowship that you can apply for, and I think that’s very helpful,” Chen said.
William Marzella, an international transfer student from Australia who is also the director of business development for TSC, said the organization offers more than just community among students. One of TSC’s main resources for members is its Emerging Leaders Program, where incoming transfer students are paired with a transfer student who has been at USC for at least a year. This is one of the perks that offers professional development, social opportunities and acclimation to the USC community.
Marzella, who is majoring in mechanical engineering, also hosts TSC’s podcast, “Transfer Student Experience,” where he talks one-on-one with another transfer student in hopes of enlightening the greater USC community and prospective students of this community’s experiences.
“So as you know, as you probably well know, transfer students have it rougher than normal students, especially in connecting with the right people,” Marzella said in the introductory episode of the podcast. “And so talking with current transfers and alumni about their challenges and more importantly how they overcame them would be super valuable for someone to listen to.”
According to Marzella, the transition for the organization has been difficult as one of the key struggles transfer students face is the social aspect of being a USC student, which looks drastically different since the coronavirus pandemic forced classes online.
“Making the transition to online made that face-to-face communication a lot harder,” Marzella said. “I think that a big thing for transfers is the social scene — making friends. And so doing that over Zoom is a little bit harder.”
But TSC has adapted its in-person social events to fit the virtual setting. Since the onset of remote learning, they have hosted virtual cook-offs and movie nights.
Another facet of the transfer student experience is loneliness, which is all the more exacerbated by pandemic-induced quarantine and stay-at-home orders.
In early March 2020, USC announced a remote learning trial for three days, and one the first day, the University asked students leaving campus for spring break to not return until mid-April; less than a week later, Folt announced that the remainder of the spring semester would be held online. The Fall 2020 semester was anticipated to be in-person until a spike in coronavirus cases caused Folt to back track that announcement and recommend students to take all classes online and reconsider living on or around campus.
“I just think that transfer students, by their nature, are just alone,” Marzella said. “That was the biggest thing for me: feeling alone and feeling like an outsider.”
And even before the coronavirus drove the University to go to a limited-density campus population, space for transfer students — to live and commune, particularly — were limited or even nonexistent. Chen remembered seeing how transfer students who matriculated this semester were not guaranteed housing, which is USC’s policy before the coronavirus.
“At the beginning of May, when they were still accepting transfer students, they heavily emphasized that housing was not guaranteed for transfer students,” Chen said. “And, for me, that was stressful. Like, I knew I had to get off-campus housing, but along with coronavirus, I didn’t know if I should get off-campus housing.”
USC’s admissions brochure for transfer students has three sentences regarding housing: “Most USC students prefer to live near campus. Although university-owned housing may be available, housing for transfer students is not guaranteed, and many students choose to rent privately owned apartments nearby. Visit housing.usc.edu to learn more.”
Marzella said one thing that the University could do to improve this is to create a space for transfer students. He also said there need to be better resources to help transfer students adapt to the USC experience.
“There’s a lot of resources geared towards acclimatizing freshmen to USC and what USC life is like,” Marzella said. “But it’s not like that with transfers. There are no resources to acclimatizing transfers to that life.”
However, the Undergraduate Student Government is aiming to ameliorate this.
Early November 2020, the USC Senate passed a resolution to incorporate TSC into USG, which gives TSC official recognition and funding from USG after its trial period early Spring 2021. This period, from Jan. 15 to March 12, would give TSC the chance to prove itself as a recognized USG assembly. On Nov. 13, Provost Charles Zuokski announced in an email to the community that the Spring 2021 semester would likely begin online due to increased coronavirus cases in Los Angeles. At the time of the announcement, Los Angeles County Department of Public Health announced 2,481 new coronavirus cases, taking the county’s total confirmed case count to 332,865, and on Nov. 21 the Los Angeles Times reported that daily confirmed coronavirus cases statewide have tripled in the span of November.
As Sen. Dario Arganese told the Daily Trojan, the trial period may be difficult due to the remote setting.
“It’s definitely gonna be a challenge because in the past, when you do go to a trial period, it’s a lot more opportunity to have those in-person events and to be able to take that footage, take photos, send it in, show exactly the progress that you’re making with all your initiatives but considering we’re online, we definitely foresee it being a little bit more challenging,” Arganese said.
According to the TSC resolution, the stigma surrounding being a transfer student hinders these students’ self-confidence, citing a 2018 study from the organization that found that 82% of respondents felt overwhelmed upon entering USC. In becoming an incorporated assembly within USG, it said in the resolution that it would “enable transfer students to explore USC more comfortably, ease them into feeling a part of the Trojan family, and amplify the University’s values of wellness, integrity, and inclusion.”
In the meantime, transfer students are making the most of their first semester at USC in spite of the remote setting.
“I just feel like I’m not getting my tuition’s worth, which is upsetting, but I’m definitely so grateful I’m here,” Chen said.