Los Medanos College students planning to transfer visited San Francisco State University Nov. 1 to tour the campus and attend workshops that discussed majors and programs.

The day began with a tour of the campus, followed by lunch at which students were addressed by Director Adriana Gallardo and Outreach Coordinator K. Sara Figueroa, both from Associated Students Project Connect, and Dr. Larry Salomon of the Ethnic Studies program.

The afternoon was filled with workshops on a variety of topics including financial aid, studying abroad and nursing.

LMC student Zarya Denson Carter said the tour was informative since it touched on things she didn’t know about like the cost of housing. She also loved the opportunity for studying abroad but it’s not her No. 1 choice yet.

“I’m still indecisive,” said Carter. “This would be a great school for convenience since I can ride on BART to get to the school. I intend to take more tours in the future so hopefully I’ll have a choice by then.”

Former LMC student Renee Smith is currently studying Journalism at San Francisco State. She said she is proud to continue her education there and hopes to finish up spring of next year. While she wasn’t involved in the tour, her words of advice for students is to meet with counselors before transferring anywhere and actually match up the classes you’ve taken at LMC to make sure they transfer.     

“Matching up classes to each institution is crazy important,” said Smith, “you don’t want to fall behind because of failed transfer classes or classes that don’t match up to the university you want to go to.”

Program Coordinator for Transfer & Career Services Danna Tejada, who coordinated the tour for LMC, said she enjoyed it because it was under an hour, leaving students more time to learn about the school while they were there.

Tejada said tours like this influence students transfer decisions so everyone planning to continue their education beyond LMC should take advantage of these opportunities to help them make wise choices.

“Going to schools, seeing the diversity and asking questions in person plays a huge factor on deciding where you want to transfer,” she said, adding that such tours stimulate “student’s interests giving them answers to questions they probably wouldn’t get on the website.”  

The next university tour will be to Southern California Jan. 16-19 and take students to schools such as UCLA, U.C. Santa Barbara and Long Beach State University. For more information about tours to transfer institutions go to losmedanos.edu/transfer.