Diablo Valley College to UCSD
Biology Transfer Plan

Planning to transfer from Diablo Valley College (DVC) to UC San Diego (UCSD) as a Biology major takes more upfront planning than most students expect — and the earlier you start, the better your odds. UCSD's School of Biological Sciences offers a Biology B.S. that's consistently ranked among the most selective programs for transfer students, with the middle 50% of enrolled transfers arriving with GPAs between 3.45 and 3.92 across all majors. For Biology specifically, UCSD screens applicants on their major prerequisites separately, which means your grades in BIOL 120 (Molecular and Cell Biology), CHEM 120 (General Chemistry I), and the rest of the prep sequence carry serious weight. Transfer planning for this pathway needs to begin in your very first semester at DVC — the chemistry sequence alone (CHEM 120 → CHEM 121 → CHEM 122) spans three consecutive semesters with no room to skip or delay. On the general education side, DVC students can use IGETC to satisfy lower-division GE requirements at most UCSD colleges, and smart students double-count courses like BIOL 120 and CHEM 120 toward both IGETC Area 5 and their major prerequisites simultaneously. One thing to know upfront: unlike UC Davis or UC Santa Barbara, UC San Diego does not participate in the Transfer Admission Guarantee (TAG) program, so there's no shortcut — your application has to stand on its own. Tools like Pipeline help DVC students map out a personalized semester-by-semester plan that accounts for prerequisite chains, IGETC overlap, and UCSD's major prep screening requirements all at once, so nothing falls through the cracks on the way to a Biology B.S. at one of the country's top research universities.