Cal-GETC

• All students who are new to Merced College beginning in Fall 2025
• Current Merced College students who plan to enroll for Fall 2025 and beyond at Merced College. Students have the option to transition to Cal-GETC if following IGETC or CSU General Education before.
• Returning students to Merced College that will have catalog rights to the Fall 2025 catalog.
  • This means if you attended Merced College for example in Fall 2020 and then you return in Fall 2025, your catalog rights will have you completing Cal-GETC transfer requirements if your goal is to transfer to a UC/CSU campus.
• Students without catalog rights to Merced College. For example, students who are currently at a university and enroll at Merced College to take general education coursework.

The Cal-GETC general education template is available by viewing the 25-26 catalog.

The chart below highlights the changes to Cal-GETC and gives you an idea of the subject areas.

Total Units: 11 Courses; (34 semester or 45 quarter units)

Source: Cal-GETC Standards 

If you plan on continuing your studies at Merced College in fall 2025, you are eligible to use Cal-GETC. Cal-GETC becomes effective fall 2025.

Students are advised to check with their Merced College counselor to determine if switching to the Cal-GETC pattern is recommended for their intended major and transfer campus. For some students, staying with the CSU GE Breadth or IGETC pattern may be the best option.

It will benefit students if you transfer to a UC or a CSU with a fully certified Cal-GETC. This means you would not need to complete any additional lower-division (freshman and sophomore) general education after transfer to a UC/CSU campus. In order to achieve a full-certification of Cal-GETC, students need to complete all required 34 units of Cal-GETC prior to transfer in order to certify completion. Students must order an official transcript with Cal-GETC certification to the CSU/UC campus upon transfer to a CSU/UC campus.

Please meet with a Merced College counselor to plan your transfer and to plan your general education. Assist.org is an important resource to determine admission requirements for CSU and UC Campuses.

Advisory Note:

• Some individual colleges or majors within UC campuses might have their own specific general education requirements that Cal-GETC may not fully satisfy, according to the Cal-GETC Standards
• Although full completion of Cal-GETC is not usually an admission requirement for CSU and UC campuses, there may be some campuses that require full completion of Cal-GETC as an admissions requirement. 

Please meet with a counselor at Merced College to understand your catalog rights and understand the options for transfer general education requirements.

• Continuing students who started before fall 2025 with catalog rights for CSU General Education still have the option to complete and gain a fully certified CSU General Education certification.
• Continuing students who started before fall 2025 with catalog rights for IGETC general education still have the option to complete and gain a fully certified IGETC general education certification.

In the near future, there will likely be a “sunsetting” of the IGETC and CSU General Education certification for UC and CSU campuses. Sunsetting means the authority body, Intersegmental Committee of the Academic Senates (ICAS), will provide guidance when CSU and UC campuses will only accept Cal-GETC. If this occurs, ICAS will set a timeline, guidance, and send out memos to California Community Colleges.

Courses must be passed with a minimum grade of “C” or equivalent. This means a grade point average of at least 2.0 on a 4.0 scale is required. A “Credit” or “Pass” grade is acceptable if it’s equivalent to a “C” or higher. 

D grades are not allowable for Cal-GETC (California General Education Transfer Curriculum) certification. 

In the context of the University of California (UC) system, LOTE stands for Language other than English. The IGETC general education breadth required students to demonstrate proficiency equivalent to two years of high school courses in the same language to receive a fully-certified IGETC certification for a UC campus. 

What’s Changed? 

• The requirement was removed from Cal-GETC as a transfer requirement, though it remains a graduation requirement for many UC degrees.

What is Next? 

Merced College Counseling Faculty will still highly recommend transfer students to complete LOTE for students with interest to transfer to a UC campus. LOTE can be completed through college coursework, and other methods such as Advanced Placement (AP) or other ways deemed as allowable in the Cal-GETC standard.

Merced College has dedicated School Of counselors for students based on the students’ declared program of study. Students can utilize their Navigate portal from their MC Portal to schedule an appointment or contact the following department:

We highly advise all students who studied dual enrollment, College Career Access Pathways (CCAP) or concurrent enrollment to meet with a counselor to discuss Cal-GETC.

Students who start dual enrollment courses in fall 2025 will be advised to complete Cal-GETC requirements based on their academic plans, goals and program of study.

Please visit the CCAP website for more information.

UC and CSU campuses will only accept fully certified Cal-GETC certifications. That means students will have completed all areas of Cal-GETC before they transfer to a UC/CSU campus.

Partial certifications will not be accepted by CSU and UC campuses. In context, partial certification means a student has completed all but two courses of the required IGETC curriculum. This is distinct from full certification, where all areas are complete because courses are completed