Dear incoming transfers,

First up…CONGRATULATIONS! You should be so proud of this accomplishment and I am so very excited to welcome each and every single one of you to the UCLA community. My name is Faith Adams and I am a fourth-year and second-year transfer student majoring in History and minoring and Gender Studies. I transferred from El Camino College where I was very heavily involved in student government and so much more. Here at UCLA, I am a campus tour guide, a mentor with the transfer mentorship program, a member of the Pediatric Aids Coalition (PAC), and once again, so much more.

Transferring to UCLA was a dream come true that the me from high school could have never imagined. I had no SAT or ACT scores. I had a 2 on an AP exam and not a single clue about what I wanted to do with my life. When I found myself at my community college, the very first thing people began to ask me was “Where do you want to transfer to?” and I had no idea how to respond. So many of the people around me had already figured out where they wanted to go and I was standing there like a child lost in a grocery store. So I began to tell people I wanted to transfer to UCLA to blend in. I knew this was a great school and I looked good in blue and yellow but that all changed when I was able to visit campus for the first time. One of my dear friends had booked a campus tour and I came along as her guest and I instantly fell in love. I’m not sure if it was because of how beautiful the campus is, or because there’s a Wetzel Pretzel in Ackerman Union, or because my tour guide was just so charismatic. But I know in my heart what sold me on UCLA was the transfer community. Even though my tour guide was not a transfer student, the way she had communicated just how accepting the culture at this University was for transfer students made me realize this is the place I needed to be.

After that, when people ask me where I wanted to transfer to a very confidently would tell them UCLA, and I was lucky enough to have surrounded myself with people who believed in me. Of course, after that, the pandemic hit and then the UC application was due. Yet throughout that whole time, I knew that I loved this school and it would mean the world if I got in. And I did.

Once I finally got here it felt like a breath of fresh air. I was on living in the Transfer Living Learning Community (De Neve Holly) making friends with my roommates, joining a sorority and campus tours, and getting involved with other clubs. At first glance, everything felt perfectly all right. I was finally where I belonged.

But then the imposter syndrome crept in. I suddenly became worried that I didn’t belong here and that all of my peers knew that and judged me for being a transfer. I was worried my grades weren’t going to match up to everyone else and that the quarter system was going to kick my butt. Then I remembered something that my peer learning facilitator told me when I did the transfer summer program through AAP. He told me to give myself grace. Granted, I thought it was just silly given that my name is Faith but that interaction helped me so much in my larger transfer experience. I began to give myself grace if I didn’t perform on an essay the way I wanted to or got an A minus instead of a regular A. And guess what, I was performing just as well as everyone else in my courses. No one looked at me differently or even batted an eye when I told them I was a transfer. In fact, I was embraced with open arms by my peers.

I met so many other great transfer students by hanging out in the Transfer Student Center and during my transfer student orientation. There was this one friend of mine, Sydney, who I met during my orientation that I got pretty close to. In the fall when I went through sorority recruitment and me and Sydney were in the same recruitment group. When bid day rolled around at the end of the week, imagine my face when we ended up joining the same sorority. It was such a sweet moment, especially looking back on it as the two of us are in one of our last classes together and always save each other a seat.

I am very proud to be a transfer and let everyone around me know that I am one. And every single day that I am here at this campus I continue to fall in love with it over and over again.

With love,

Faith