Pasadena City College (Pepperdine University) Acceptance Rate, GPA, and Admission Requirements

Starting in fall 2025, California launched the CSU Transfer Success Pathway (TSP), a program that guarantees future CSU admission to recent high school graduates who enroll in a California community college and commit to transferring within three years. PCC participates in the TSP. To join, you must be a first-time, first-year California community college student (or a 2024 high school graduate who took a gap year), sign up through the CSU Transfer Planner portal by October 31 of your first fall semester, select one CSU campus and degree program, and complete your transfer requirements within three years. Once you sign up, you are entering a conditional admission agreement with that specific CSU - which means if you meet the requirements, you are admitted. This eliminates the uncertainty of a competitive transfer application at your chosen CSU. It is one of the most powerful tools available to California community college students and most incoming PCC students don't know about it because it launched in August 2025. Sign up before the deadline in your first fall semester.

Starting Fall 2025, California replaced the Intersegmental General Education Transfer Curriculum (IGETC) with a new unified framework called the California General Education Transfer Curriculum (Cal-GETC). For students who began a California community college in Summer 2025 or earlier and maintained continuous enrollment, the old IGETC pathway is preserved and can still be completed under prior rules. For all students starting Fall 2025 or later, Cal-GETC is the operative GE transfer curriculum. Completing Cal-GETC satisfies the lower-division GE requirements for both CSU and UC transfers - meaning you do not need separate GE pathways for CSU and UC at PCC. The transition matters practically: IGETC and Cal-GETC are not identical, so students who research transfer requirements using resources from before Fall 2025 may encounter outdated course lists. Confirm all GE courses using ASSIST.org and PCC's current catalog (curriculum.pasadena.edu) to ensure your coursework counts under the correct framework for your entry year.

PCC is one of only a handful of community colleges in the United States to operate its own observatory, planetarium, and seismograph on campus. The observatory was dedicated in February 1931 by Albert Einstein himself, who was joined at the ceremony by Edwin Hubble (namesake of the NASA Hubble Space Telescope). For students interested in astronomy, physics, geology, or earth science, this is not a cosmetic distinction - PCC's astronomical and physical science programs are resourced with actual research-grade instrumentation rarely found at two-year institutions. PCC is also located near Caltech and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which means faculty with direct research connections to both institutions teach on campus. This proximity shapes the quality of science faculty recruiting at PCC in ways that distance community colleges from major research infrastructure cannot replicate. Science-track students transferring to STEM programs at UC and CSU campuses should leverage these connections through faculty relationships and research exposure during their time at PCC.

PCC's Center for the Arts is an 87,000 sq ft facility housing the Westerbeck Recital Hall (80+ student and professional performances per year), the Center for the Arts Theatre, Sexson Auditorium, and two gallery spaces. The music department runs the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Band - which plays in the Rose Parade each January 1 and at Rose Bowl games - a rare performance opportunity for community college students. Theater produces four plays and one musical on its main stage each year, plus two second-stage productions per semester. The Math department is the current defending champion of the AMATYC (American Mathematical Association of Two-Year Colleges) national competition. PCC was also the first Southern California community college to offer an approved speech-language pathology assistant program and one of the few anywhere to offer an anesthesia technician program recognized by the American Society of Anesthesia Technologists and Technicians. If you are a performing arts, music, or science student, PCC offers production volume and program breadth that most California community colleges do not match.