Transferring to the University of Alabama at Birmingham

I transferred from Jeff State to UAB in 2010 with little direction as to what I wanted to do as far as a major and career. It was actually a lot simpler than I thought. I applied just like any other student, went to my tour, just like any other student and then started school just like any other student, so it was very simple. I got my financial aid done early, I got my class schedule done early, so it was just a matter of coming over here and showing up to class. Transferring into this university, it was seamless.

Something that surprised me about taking classes at UAB is the fact that it is a really big university atmosphere, I expected it to be more for the medical and more for the UAB hospital, but it surprised me with how much it's a school. You got every nationality here, people seem to mesh pretty good, and get along with each other, so the diversity really stood out more than anything. Do everything possible to get involved, because it's what you make it.

I did homecoming, that was an experience, with Blaze, so that was fun. Also I tried salsa classes up here at the gym, that was neat, that was different. I never thought of something like that, taking salsa classes, so I mean just stuff like that, doing stuff outside of the box and having the opportunity to do stuff outside the box. Becoming a part of Alpha Gam was kind of unexpected.

It was a really good decision because it keeps me involved, and it keeps me doing volunteer work around campus and it kind of puts you out doing things to where you wouldn't normally do if you were just a regular student. If you are a transferring student, don't be nervous, there is really not much to it. Just make sure you do things ahead of time, plan it out, talk to the appropriate advisors. If you know what you want to do, they'll go ahead and pull the curriculum out.

If you want to be a nurse, go talk to the nursing manager, the person in charge of ensuring that you can get a step into the nursing program and then, you know, by the time you transfer to UAB, they have face recognition with you, they know you, they've seen that you're putting forth an effort versus everybody else. It might be your GPA, it might be a number or a name. I think that my opportunities that I've had to get involved in all the research that's here at UAB definitely helps, it's a leg up on a lot of the other applicants. Just the fact that it's UAB, UAB is a known school, it's a little bit more prestigious in a sense, and so therefore saying that I'm graduating from UAB as a CIS student did help me a lot during my time looking for jobs.

There're so many different things that you can do here, so, it's like family, you know each school is like family. So, whatever school you're gonna be in, it'll be just like a family away from home. And then a good education on top of that, you can't beat that.